Sawtooth ST-ES-BKB Black Electric Guitar with Black Pickguard

very very cool.I bought this guitar as an experiment in several respects and I am very impressed.First of all, I wanted to see what a guitar made of a light-weight wood (in this case sycamore) would be like. It is very light, noticeably so (at a guess, about half what a fender version weighs), and I think that's a good thing, both from a holding the thing up, and from the way it sounds. Not sure if the weight has any affect on the final sound, but this guitar does sound nice, and unplugged, it has a very loud acoustic sound (compared to other strat type guitars I've played). Even though the body is super light weight, it still balances in the hand and on the strap, so somebody did a good job engineering this thing.On the down side, the wood is very soft, so it dents easily, but I think that's a good trade off. So far, in all my set up and playing, it's accumulated a few tiny knocks, but not really noticeable.The other experimental aspect of this purchase was that I've seen some youtube videos about how to turn a cheap guitar into something worthwhile, and I wanted to give it a try. I also wanted a guitar to try some guitar repair/maintenance on without worrying about hurting a valuable instrument.First of all, this thing played pretty well right out of the box. I really liked it just how it was, and had to overcome my fear of ruining it before I was able to dive in and do my experiments. -The only issues at all as it came were: the frets had some kind of coating on them that took a few minutes to wear away, and until then, the frets felt really scratchy. And one of the tuners was binding a little bit, making it hard to tune that string (it would skip over the correct pitch when the bind released).I have an '87 American standard strat with a couple of seymour duncan pickups in it, and I have an older roland strat (the synth one, which I think was by ibanez), and this one, I think, sounds better. It really does. It sounds more old school, like a vintage item. More telecaster-y, perhaps. Twangy, but rich. The neck is straight, and the frets are nicely level and dressed (except for a bit of roughness on the ends). The controls all work pretty well, not super smooth or anything, but perfectly serviceable. About the only area where this Sawtooth is lacking compared to those other guitars is that it doesn't really have any shielding, just a little under the controls, and it's noticeable. It's a lot more susceptible to interference than my other guitars.The pickups each show about 2.8KΩ resistance. This is about half the standard for strat pickups, but they sound normal. My guess is that this is because they use heavier wire for winding these, but I'm no expert. Didn't pull apart a pickup to check. -They have ceramic bar magnets on the bottom, with metal slug pole-pieces. I've heard that this is an inferior design, but they really do sound good, so... -Anyway, compared side by side into the same amp, they sound about as loud as standard stratocaster pickups.Here's what I did in terms of 'fixes':-Took off the dud tuner and squirted some oil into it, ran it around a bunch of times and then cleaned it out with some alcohol and then put a little more oil in. I couldn't figure out how to take it apart, so that was the best I could do. Now it's workable. Still stiff, but it doesn't bind and release any more.-Sanded the ends of the frets with some 400 grit sandpaper, just by feel, and this took care of the rough spots, no problem.-tweaked the bridge so that it floats off the body of the guitar. I like them this way, and I believe this was the original intent of this design, but this one, like all others I've ever seen, came tightened flat to the body. Because of this change, I had to reset the intonation and action, as expected, and there was plenty of adjustment room left to do this on both counts.-I wrapped some silicone gel (from a toy octopus!) around the tremolo springs and under the strings on the head-stock, to damp down sympathetic vibrations. I don't know for sure, but this seemed worse than on my other guitars, they all do it to some degree, and I make these fixes to all of mine.-I rewired the controls to turn what was a pair of tone knobs (the strat standard config) into a master tone and a blender knob (this second mostly just to use the extra knob for something. the blender lets you mix in the neck pickup with the bridge, not normally available on a strat switch). This all went just fine. The electronic parts are decent enough, and the existing soldering was good. The wiring was neat and so on. Putting the pickguard back on, I noticed that some of the screws weren't really biting into the wood all that well. Soft wood I guess....so, after that. Man, this thing is great. It sounds great, and plays nice, and it stays in tune and it intonates well, and yeah, I think it is maybe better than my other guitars. The finish is fun, but obviously simple and thin. In general, the guitar doesn't feel as durable, and I suppose it isn't, based on the materials used, but I don't think I care. I'll make that trade.-and, when you figure the price into the equation, it's amazing. This thing costs, what... 1/8th of the price of the guitars I'm comparing it to.

I didn't have any expectations when I ordered this guitar. Reviews were mixed about 10 years ago, but it looked like they made some improvements since then. Out of the box, the guitar was pristine and very playable. Pickguard has a mirror finish, and the paint has no flaws. The neck is nice and straight and the frets are rounded at the ends. You don't feel them at all. The action was perfect, I didn't need to make any adjustments, just played it right out of the box. The pickups aren't bad, they sound decent. Intonation was slightly off on the two low strings, but that's about it. Super fun to play, for a lower end guitar this was a great buy. It looks cool and is overall a nice guitar.

Nice guitar would put better strings on it outside of that very happy with it

I too bought this as a sort of experiment, to prove that an ordinary guitar could be transformed into a Masterpiece using nothing but aftermarket parts. I changed the bridge pickup to a Hot rail Humbucker pick-ups. The volume and tone pots were changed to 500k push/pull pots, making all sorts of combinations of sounds. It also adds a tone control to the middle pickup, and also allows the Hot-rail pickup to be either 2 single coil or one double coil humbucker pickup. I am also changing the pick-guard to a nice red/black marbleized looking one which makes it more custom looking. Finally I changed the tremolo to a Floyd Rose chrome tremolo with locking nut. I will then change the knobs and pickup selector to nice chrome with black accent ones. For the investment, it is going to make the guitar look and play like others costing 10 times as much, considering there was nothing wrong with it to begin with!!!! These were merely cosmetic changes. (like a little plastic surgery) and let me tell you the ending result is awesome. I will update the pictures once the changes are done.......Even if you don't do anything have it set up by a professional and put your favorite gauge strings on it and you will be happy. The tremolo is actually decent for a guitar for the price, so whether you favor a Floyd Rose or something else , it's up to you. I prefer a 80's Washburn Wonderbar which has no springs in the back and is flush mounted with a coil spring in the front. It NEVER goes out of tune and has 6 locking screws.....too bad they don't make them anymore......Thanks Amazon for another great guitar at an awesome price!!!!!!

I have 5 other guitars and I like the overall feel of the neck and light body weight on this compared to my others. Guitar came with a decent set up frets filed and action set ok. Strings aren’t terrible either. When I took it out of the box 4 out of 6 strings were in tune which is pretty amazing. Pickups aren’t that hot but have a nice soft tone compared to my other strat with Alnico 5 pickups. For under $70 delivered it’s an awesome value. Would highly reccomend for any level player.

Sounds and plays well for the money, but the tone knows were not wired and do nothing. The bridge is a strat-style but not floating, so it only goes down. But not sure why it's even on there because if you use it AT ALL the strings go way out of tune. I just consider it a fixed bridge and don't even put the bar on because of this. Not sure why the tone knobs do nothing. I guess the Chinese guy in charge of that was drinking that day. lol

Action: Nice and lowIntonation: Not too far from sharps or flatsFinish: Excellent!Pickups: Perfect for bedroom, living room, kitchen, dining room jamming volume....You don't want to annoy the neighbors.Neck: Straight. Back of neck is not covered with any finish, so its bare wood.Tuners: Could be smoother.Volume/Tone knobs and P/U selector: Ok, works.Vibrato: I don't use it.One of the better made import guitars for under $200.

Tuning of guitar seems to be off. I tuned 5 times and still guitar sounds offtune. The company should give suggestions and then I will change the review