TE-40 TBK Deluxe Series : TE-40 TBK - my honest review

This is an initial review of this guitar, as I received it yesterday. My review will talk about the whole process of me purchasing this guitar.

I ordered the guitar last week, but I chose the wrong payment option, so there was a delay - I chose the direct bank payment instead of VISA - which I should have chosen. So, the money was transferred on Saturday and I received notification that it would be delivered yesterday.

I sent the sales contact a couple of emails, I received a reply within 24 hours, which is excellent, and expecting any faster response is unreasonable as the sales contact teams will be receiving thousands of emails a day.

So, I received the parcel yesterday. The outer box was large, the packaging consisted of 5 pieces of brown paper, the inner box containing the guitar was not supported properly in the outer box. The outer box was bashed a little - there was no "HANDLE WITH CARE" stickers on the outer box which would indicate to the courier that the item was fragile.

So, I opened the inner box, the polystyrene which held the neck was broken, the little pieces of polystyrene at the bottom of the box were not secured in the box but loose. I am not asking for the padding that a case would provide, but this needs to be reconsidered.

The guitar was inside a bubble-wrap envelope which protected the guitar, paper around the strings and a small piece of polystyrene protecting the switch. The guitar was well protected, but with the broken polystyrene on the neck holder I needed to confirm there was no damage. Luckily there was none.

Now, the review...

The bridge was high, the string action was 2 to 3 mm higher than it should have been, but that was easily resolved - there was a hex-key for the truss-rod, but a small screwdriver to adjust the bridge would have been nice.

The strings on the guitar were good, I suspect 9's. They were loose, but again that was fine. After resetting the bridge height and retuning the guitar was setup. The tuners were tight, someone else might describe them as grinding. If after 6 months or so they need to be replaced then I shall.

The nut is plastic, it is well cut and nice, that will easily be swapped when the time comes.

The guitar is light, when compared with my Epiphone LP, it feels very light. I like it. the pickups are excellent, the neck is brighter than the bridge, the mixture of both gives the best tone.

The volume and tome pots are smooth, no crunching at all which is nice. It would be good if there was a push-pull split selector - maybe for the next version of the guitar.

One thing which I really do not like is this guitar is the through-body holes. If they holes were straight and not at an angle - as it is - it would have been better aesthetically, so much so that I almost did not purchase it. The black high gloss body is phenomenal and the gold hardware is beautiful. It would be good if this model was available in other colours with different colours of hardware as an option.

Beautiful guitar, well worth the money.