SC-500 BK Vintage Series : A guitar easily worth double the price

In a nutshell, this guitar is pretty fantastic. If you're thinking about getting one - just get it. You won't regret it.

Firstly, the fit and finish is great. The paintwork is immaculate, the binding looks fantastic and the whole guitar feels great in the hands. The pots are smooth, the switch feels sturdy and even the tuners are of usable quality - very impressive stuff for such a cheap guitar. The pickguard isn't all that impressive, just a single ply piece of plastic, but I'm not overly bothered by that. The pickups are average, but I wouldn't expect anything more for what I paid. They work fine, they sound okay.

For me there is one standout feature of this guitar, which is the neck heel/body joint. It's contoured, allowing far smoother and better access to the top frets. Gibsons worth many times the price of this guitar don't have this feature. I don't do much up that end of the board myself but anything I do there just feels great as I don't have a chunk of wood digging into my hand.

Bottom line is: a great beginner/mid range guitar, and a fantastic base for modifications.