ST-62MN VW Vintage Series : Excellent budget ST style guitar

I bought this as a backup guitar and to fill the single coil role for home recording projects. I didn't want to spend alot of money and had read reviews / heard sound clips and decided to take the plunge.

First impressions were good, the guitar looks great, plays nicely and was well set up (lowish action and intonation was set). Electronics are fine, all pickups work and sound how you'd expect them to in

each position and switch and pots all work as they should.

The Wilkinson pickups are great (though a little noisy with gain / high volume) and sound like the guitar they are emulating in each position:

The neck pickup is great for cleans and lightly overdriven tones, the middle / bridge position gives

a great quacky clean tone and the bridge is very bright and great for leads and overdriven / distorted rhythm playing.

The bridge is good and is adjustable for string height (action) and length (intonation) and has 3 tremolo springs which hold it firmly in place (couldn't use the tremolo bar) You could loosen the springs (or remove one of the springs) to use this though not sure how well it'd hold tuning.

The neck doesn't sit flush with the body (their is a small gap between them) this doesn't affect playability of the instrument and is purely a cosmetic flaw.

The fretboard is a separate piece of wood to the neck (though this isn't too noticable as the neck has a gloss finish) again just a cosmetic issue. On close inspection the fretboard markers also seem slightly blurry (almost like a low resolution image)

Tuners work and hold tuning though aren't particularly smooth and can be quite difficult to turn.

Nut is well cut and intonation at the first fret is fine and didn't notice any tuning issues from strings bends Though I did put some graphite (pencil lead) on the nut slots when I first changed the strings.

The truss rod doesn't seem to do anything, I changed string gauge and didn't notice any difference when trying to make an adjustment (ended up doing a whole turn anti clockwise to add relief and measured no change with the feeler gauge)

Overall for the price this was a great purchase with only minor issues and cosmetic flaws going against it and will suit a beginner as well as someone looking for a budget backup or just looking to try an ST style guitar.