DC-Custom Cherry : Pretty good

Ordered this after spending 6 years on a 100 euro HSS strat from a unknown brand, as my first upgrade.

Wanted something with two humbuckers and 24 frets.

Out of the box, the guitar looks great. minor cosmetic flaws are a small chip-like thing right on the end of the binding on the corner, right after the end of the 24th fret, and some glue visible under the nut.

Build-wise, some screws on the pickguard and the screw that is on the truss rod are drilled at an angle. Again, only visual imperfections, doesn't affect playability.

Tuners and tuning stability after changing strings (the ones shipped were nothing special, I don' t think they were D'addario since they weren't mentioned in the product description. They were really thick, they might have been .11s, I now put on .09s since the guitar will be my E standard axe) are perfect, responsive and smooth, keeping it in tune nicely.

IMPORTANT, the guitar WILL neckdive if you have it on a regular nylon strap, but thankfully with my order I ordered a basic HB leather strap, and with it's raw leather inner layer it stays perfectly in place, so definetely buy a leather strap too if you don't have one.

Sound is great through my Katana 100 mkI, can play all the classic rock and bluesy stuff like Led Zep but can also dabble in playing some metal, as long as its not some ultra modern stuff like metalcore etc

NOW, the only giant flaw this guitar had was that, after a day of playing, the pickups (mostly the neck but it also affected the bridge a couple of times) and pickup selector suddenly decided they were not going to function. Actually, when you selected the neck pickup for example, it would be barely heard. Not completely off, just very very very quiet. And that is with my amps gain at max. The other one would be perfectly fine though. If I played with the selector a little, sometimes it would get fixed for a while, but then it would go quiet again. After two weeks, and not wanting to bother with returning it because it was perfect already, I brought it to my old guitar teacher who has a soldering iron. He didn't find any wires loose, everything was in place it seemed. With nothing else to do, he de-soldered and then re-soldered every single wire back, and that fixed it. The term he used was, literally translated from Greek, "it was probably a cold solder that caused it". I have no idea what the correct term is in english, that is what he said.

With new .09 gauge strings and a proper setup from my teacher, the action is now very low and very comfortable to play, no buzzing. With the old thick strings and the subpar setup job I gave it out of the box, I couldn't get it to stop buzzing on frets 0-5. Maybe it had to do with the strings, maybe it just needed a more experienced hand to do the adjustments, who knows.

Also, another remark from my teacher is that the nut is very high, ie it needs sanding. I don't want to bother with that right now though, the action is perfectly fine for now.

As a closing statement, coil split would be an excellent feature to add on this guitar, and definitely something I will do in the future, as the pickups sound great already, can't wait to hear how they sound split too.

tl;dr great guitar, just get it setup correctly, either by yourself or someone who knows what they're doing, and I hope you don't get a lemon in the wiring department like I did.