Wildkat Royale : Awesome guitar - Might need extensive fret work

For the price is literally impossible to find such a beauty.

Pros:

- To me the pickups sound about right, is certainly a beautiful sounding set of pickups. They're loud too. I'm playing "Bryant's Bounce" with it and love it's sound.

- Marvelous choice of finish and colors. Certainly has a special, very attractive look.

- Great tuners: Grover tuners, no less.

- It's lighter than my Gretsch center block, and a tad lighter if any compared to my Gretsch 5420t. It still feels solid, it not as light as it looks. Not as light as a plain modern LP.

- Very comfortable to play due to it's size too.

- Good sturdy hardware.

- It keeps intonation good, given you know a Bigsby is not for big benders or dive bombers. If you bend big you need to tweak your trem bar. Still I don't think is worse than any of my Gretsch guitars.

Cons:

- The bindings below the F holes are badly finished, leaving traces of glue....I quickly and easily fixed them by grabbing a small piece of sandpaper. Done, beautiful.

- The fretwork is quite poor, I had to file around 30 different fret spots, overall it was very irregular, some of them quite high, most notably at the 12th and 18th frets. The guitar was madly buzzing before I took the time to level them with a Hosco Japanese fret (awesome tool)...after that I could set the action on the low side buzz free.

- The wires inside cause a buzz, hard to put some cotton and tape there to hold the cables through the F hole.

- The saddle setup was a bit off...but that's common.

- I feel the angle from the Bigsby roller to the bridge is a tad too sharp. I might change the bridge to a roller one, also for fancy reasons, but so far I don't feel I need to do so....the bridge doesn't rock as one youtube video shows and the guitar simply plays fine.

Conclusion:

This is a guitar a Jazz player would love to get his hands on. It has a beautiful tone and plays awesome.

It needs setup: Not a guitar for people that doesn't have the knowledge to fix it. It would require a luthier full setup plus some cosmetic fixes on the f holes.

I still give it 5 stars because in my opinion this is a premium guitar that could be around a couple thousands but seems like Epiphone is giving them away because they're badly finished from the chinese factory.

UPDATE:

- Changed it's bigsby roller to a special one (bricksbiggsfix) that sits higher and gives you the right angle towards the bridge. Marvelous, after leaving the arm up or down the strings didn't go out of tune anymore.

- Installed a roller bridge. Always helps. (no it doesn't suck your tone or sustain)

- Installed some PlanetWaves locking/trimming tuners.

- Changed the pots and selector cap for metal gold.

Well....this now is an outstanding guitar.