R-457 BK Progressiv Series : Cheap Meal

I am impressed with my R-457. For less than the cost of a decent meal out you get a 7-string monster which is amazing value. I bought this guitar, as I suspect most will, to play around with the 7-string concept.

I found no flaws in the finish of mine.

The pickups are very decent. If not the greatest sounding they are perfectly adequate, have the right voicing for this kind of guitar and can create some decent tones. Obviously you shouldn't expect to get a great jazz tone from them but you can get some reasonable gentler tones by dialling the tone and volume down.

The neck has a very nice satin finish. Very smooth and easy to work with. The fretboard wasn't obviously dry, as others have been, although i will treat it and probably change the strings at some stage. The Kiesel-ish headstock is nicely done, too.

Every other one of my seven HBs has 10s on it. This one has 9s. Hooray! On the down side they aren't the d'Addarios you get on other models.

I have only found two minor things to mention, so far:

-one of the neck screws is installed poorly and doesn't sit flush with the neck. This kind of things is quite annoying as it's as basic as it gets and takes minimal effort to get right.

-The tuning stability of mine is quite poor, right now. Others have reported better results and I haven't played mine much, yet, so I'm hopeful that it will settle down with some more playing and string stretching. The generic tuners don't seem to work as well as those on other HBs I have, although they appear to be the same. Particularly on the lower two strings, so perhaps they don't like the heavier gauges used here. A replacement set of locking tuners might be a worthwhile investment.

Overall this is a hell of a bargain for the price, a pretty decent guitar in general and a great way to get into 7-string guitars.