R-458MN WH Fanfret : Worth giving it a try for the price

I have many old and new guitars in all price and quality ranges and just wanted to see what an 8 string multiscale guitar feels like without having to invest a lot of money. This was the obvious choice. When the guitar arrived the set-up was actually quite good and was in playable condition out of the box, but needed to be set-up again after I changed the stock strings to heavier bottom strings. The instrument's construction is quite good, I did not see any paint, finish or construction issues, tight neck pocket, etc.. It's well-balanced and the fret edges were smooth enough, although the frets themselves felt a bit raw and needed a little polishing and smoothing, no big deal. I liked the smooth feel and shape of the neck. As mentioned in other reviews, the nut needs a bit of filing work for the strings to go through properly; again no big deal. After a professional luthier set it up for me, the heaviest string still has some buzz but I guess I sort of expected that and can live with it. Now on the downside, the pickups are really where I had to lower my overall ratings for this guitar; they are very noisy and muddy and thus probably of quite low quality. I could live with the clean tones which are acceptable, but once OD/distortion kicks in, it becomes difficult to distinguish between the notes I am playing, the sounds seem to blend into each other in an overall noisy background. BTW, I am by no means a heavy distortion user or heavy music player generally, although I do like my OD/fuzz/distortion and I have dozens of guitars with all kinds of pickups for a comparison with, again, dozens of analog and digital effects. At this price point I can live with using this guitar for playing experimental free jazz type of stuff with clean(er) tones, it is a good instrument for an introduction to practicing on 8 strings and a MS fretboard for developing different skills. Presuming that this guitar is normally meant for players with heavier tonal expectations, I'd have to say that something would have to be done about the pickups, which I may decide to invest in at some point.