Encouraged by the favorable price of €175, I bought this guitar. When it arrived, the action was not set up very well, so when bending the strings more strongly on the lower frets the strings would catch on the frets, causing fret buzz. The bridge saddles also buzzed undesirably when strumming a bit harder. Additionally, when bending strings there was that scratchy sound caused by rough (unpolished) frets. Also, the volume and tone potentiometers would rub against the metal plate underneath when turning them. The neck relief also needed some adjustment.
I took the guitar to a luthier who fixed all of these issues, lightly leveled and polished the frets, and after that the guitar became quite usable. As for the sound, the bridge pickup is quite good, suitable for country-style twang but also for distorted rock. However, the neck pickup is rather muddy; I’m not sure whether adjusting its height would help. The stock tuners are decent, so the guitar can stay in tune even with stronger string bends.
I think this guitar is a solid modding platform, since most of the parts can be replaced with better quality standard components (the only question is how much that will cost). Contrary to common opinion, this is *not* a good guitar for beginners, because without a proper initial setup it is quite difficult to play. I believe the target audience for this guitar is people who want an inexpensive instrument for modding and experimentation. I have already replaced the tuners (I installed locking tuners), and I’m planning to install better pickups and improved electronics, so we’ll see how much the guitar improves afterwards. In my opinion, the weakest point of this guitar is the non-standard top loader bridge, for which it is difficult to find a replacement, as well as the rather poor saddles that I will also need to replace.