ST-59HM Fiesta Red : The Quality Was Mind Blowing

I last purchased a guitar some 7 years ago (the thing was unplayable out of the box), it cost maybe 5x what the ST59HM did. I wasn't sure what to expect at this price range.

Apart from a slight blemish around the neck pocket, the finish was flawless. The Fiesta red colour looks pretty authentic to me, in general the attention to detail is very pleasing.

My experience here tells me that this would be an ideal guitar for a beginner as all that was needed in order to start cranking out some Hank Marvin stuff was a slight tuning.

An experienced enthusiast on a tight budget would love this guitar, spending a little time, no sophisticated luthier tools to end up with a guitar that looks and feels more expensive than it is.

Starting with the neck relief, it just needed a slight loosening of the truss rod, I went with .009 inches at the 8th fret based on the radius, the truss rod seemed nice and smooth.

The vibrato plate was flat against the body out of the box, I wanted it to float a little, that trick with 'Post It' notes in combination with a small amount of adjustment to tension of the springs got my desired 1/8th inch vibrato plate height above the body easily.

A little string height adjustment was needed, 2mm and 1.5mm was easy to achieve on the bass and treble sides respectively, although I've had to order some shorter grub screws as the stock ones protrude too much with the lower saddles.

The intonation was pretty much spot on out of the box, just the high E string being a little sharp.

The frets feel comfortable, no sharpness encountered at all, I gave the frets a good polish and lubricated the the nut etc. (I lost the high E string during the process, a replacement set of 10-46 strings ensured the previous changes were unaffected) Other than that there's nothing else that needs doing with this guitar.

The ST59HM is the least expensive in my collection, but could well end up one of my most played guitars.