CrazedFandango

Great guitar, well made but pickups were too hot for my tastes. The bridge pickup is high output and sounds harsh without gain; if you're playing metal, these are probably fine. The neck pickup was ok, if lacking a bit of clarity and can be a bit boomy. The split tones with both coils on was unusably bright and shrill. I'd recommend this guitar as pickups can be changed to suit your style. Mine now has Bare Knuckle Black Dogs and sounds amazing (IMO).

Really well made and versatile. I tend to use the mkii setting mostly, which is surprising, as I bought it as I like FF pedals and thought I'd use the mki.v mostly. It can do vintage sounds and using the tone settings, it'll not get lost in the mix. The bias settings make it pedal board friendly, as well as adding the velcro/dying battery sound.

This is currently a bit of a bargain. The neck is quite slim and the guitar being hollow bodied, is very light. The hardware is good enough, with no obvious issues; the latest pickups are lower output and therefore brighter and more vintage (Epiphone have clearly listened to complaints on this), but it is still a fairly warm/dark sounding guitar if you are used to Strats. I think any upgrades would purely be for personal taste rather than necessity. I gave 4 stars as mine had a bit of paint missing where the neck joins to the body, but I was able to touch this in, as the paint is easy to match (auto paint). Also, the bridge pickup was squealing with very little gain which was easily fixed by adjusting the pickup mounting screws (keep in mind that this guitar will feedback fairly easily but can be controlled, or used creatively). I did also swap the pickguard for a cream one to match the binding as (IMO) the white just looked wrong.