EART SSS UNBOXING - Are Youtubers being HONEST about CHEAP GUITARS?

hey everyone i'm ryan you're watching 60 cycle hub and in this video i'm going to do two things well i'm going to try anyways right obviously i'm going to unbox this guitar check it out do my thing that i do but more importantly than that i'm going to ask a question um our guitar youtubers myself included in this question are guitar youtubers being honest about all these budget guitars we're always covering i think it's an important question i think it's an important concern for all the viewers and the consumers out there and the reason why i'm asking that question and looking into this guitar while i do it is because a week and a half ago or so someone on the 60 cycle home facebook group mentioned that youtube is absolutely infested with videos on this brand eart i had never heard of this brand before this facebook post so i looked into it and it's true oh my gosh there's so many videos from channels i've never even heard of before channels i've never seen before covering this guitar brand and in typical youtube fashion the vast majority of them were overwhelmingly positive almost humorously positive to the point where even me i'm on the inside guys this is my job making guitar youtube videos i was getting red flags i'm like this sounds too good to be true right it's got to be too good to be true so i thought i would buy one i i bought this with my money guys i bought it with my money um my my actual money not patreon money like my pocket money i bought this guitar i have had no contact with this brand at all i wanted i wanted to look into it i was getting red flags just like everyone else so i want to see what the story is i do want to mention that there were a few channels i found that uh you know kudos to them they were pointing out issues that they found there was one uh specifically found major quality control issues and this channel even pointed out they even mentioned that they were provided with the guitar by the brand so that is going on that brand is providing guitars to channels right now thankfully this uh this channel did point out the quality control issues something i've never seen before they had nails visible nails coming through the fretboard apparently it's not uncommon for there to be nails in between the fretboard and the neck to hold the fretboard in place while it's being glued but typically those nails are hidden underneath the frets in this case they were like not hidden at all like you could see them they were flush with the fretboard it looked like it's still like a totally playable guitar like not really a functional issue but man i've never seen that before another channel i don't know if they were sent it or if they bought it uh they had a couple videos on ear to guitars and they got one guitar it was a less ball style guitar and it was completely non-functional out of the box like the electronics didn't function and the guy had to do his own repair job on it and the action intonation wasn't set at all on that guitar so there are channels out there doing their job showing off when things are wrong that doesn't mean necessarily that the other channels that had a positive experience are being dishonest but man they're just so enthusiastic about it that it did feel weird right it feels weird when there's so many channels being that over the top and i've personally been accused of that sort of thing before i try to i try to be sincere and i do my best to try to communicate what i'm actually experiencing with a guitar or a piece of gear when i'm using it i think a common example in the internet culture of all this stuff is the boss katana when i first covered the boss katana i bought it myself and i love that amp i think it's fantastic but there was so much coverage of it on youtube and so many youtubers being so enthusiastic about it i think that the way it translated to a lot of people in the audience a lot of viewers is that it was being presented as like this is the ultimate amp this is the best amp ever that's not the case it's a two hundred dollar solid state slash digital amp that you can gig with and i think if you look at it in those terms it's a fantastic amp at 200 bucks if there's people out there saying it's the best amp ever no they're being hyperbolic that's not the truth all right shall i open this thing now i'm a little nervous what if what if i'm another one of these channels that's like oh it's amazing it's fantastic by the way i don't want anyone to ever think that i'm being wholly dismissive of criticism towards uh guitar youtubers and that whole scene as consumers you are fully within your rights it's honestly healthy it's expected that you be critical that you be skeptical that if something doesn't feel right if the information doesn't add up to you that you are suspicious of information that you're getting i've personally not experienced a situation where a brand is paying me to lie about guitars or pedals amps whatever every single experience i've had with a brand except for one and i refuse to work with that brand ever again every experience i've had with a brand has just been like hey do you want to demo this what are your rates i'm like here are my rates they send it there's no other real communication there's no bullet points there's no script there's nothing like that there's no expectations communicated for it to be a good review or whatever it's a very casual interaction and it's been very positive for me in like the seven years of me doing this like i said there's only been one company i've ever dealt with that tried to micromanage any of my content and like i said i'll never work with them again all right here we go let's open it up wow so something that was mentioned in the other videos that i watched and i feel like their cameras didn't really pick it up i'm picking it up right now through the bubble wrap is how green this pick guard is wow that's really green [Laughter] came packed in a single box by the way this is a 190 189 guitar when i bought it off of amazon i bought um the second to last one that was available so they might not even be in stock so i bought this with my money and there's a chance that there's not even a potential for me to make affiliate earnings off of it this is technically a loss besides youtube ad revenue which on average i could probably maybe expect to make twenty dollars in youtube ad revenue on this video if it really blows up thank you guys but uh i kind of doubt that wow that pick guard is just so green let me get something well here this this is white the pickups are white like i like a nice mint pick guard that's like key lime green that's that's wild same for the back plate it came with a wiggle stick so i want to install that it's not a screw in it's a push in but it just kind of pushes in i was expecting a click i wonder if there's a tension adjuster on that i don't like how loose it's hanging and it i didn't get a firm click off of it when i pressed it in so i'm wondering if it's even in all the way yeah it doesn't really feel right the way the bar is sitting in there something a lot of the other channels gush over is the fretwork it does have stainless steel frets which is interesting the only other guitar i have that has stainless steel frets is this harley benton here the fusion 2 and i'm a big fan of this guitar but it's a totally different price point this is like 350 before shipping and you got to ship it from towmen in germany so this is essentially half the price and it has stainless steel frets the fretboard is glossy like it's it's a glossy rosewood which is very interesting a high polished glossy rosewood fretboard but yeah these frets they're they're very polished the ends are rounded off to be little balls i've seen this style of fret dressing before on like premium guitars and this isn't as good as those but it is interesting that they are going for that style of fret on such a budget guitar um there was one channel that theorized that maybe they were going for like a plect style thing there's no possible way right but that is very interesting we'll see how it plays the nut is not perfectly flush but it's not abnormal at all so far this thing does look better than what you would expect from a 190 guitar matte finish on the body i'm not always a fan of matte finish but it does feel nice a little bit of an angle on the heel here trying to attempt to give you a hint of like a comfort heel without actually really doing a comfort heel deep curves and cuts on the back there which i never really understand like my hand meets the guitar like that the way it's carved is like they're expecting you to be playing like that no one plays like that a little bit of a scraping noise from the knobs but i think that's just the knob rubbing on the pickguard the bridge is really interesting to me and that that arm doesn't feel quite right the way it's pushed in but then the saddles look really nice but then i'm not sure that means the bridge itself is necessarily a premium bridge the screws aren't screwed all the way in on the bridge either the tuners are interesting kind of an interesting style i'm honestly not a huge fan of the headstock shape i know it's a more modern kind of take on a six in line headstock but yeah i'm typically not into that look decently big strap buttons on here they're not locking strap buttons obviously but nice big mushroom head on those interesting that they went for the trust adjustment at the heel here it's honestly pretty convenient when you get that the harley benton has that as well i have a few other guitars that have that the neck has a bit of a flat and wide feel to it almost like an ibanez sort of experience and i know it's supposed to be a compound radius on these i'm not sure what the measurements are but it does have that modern flat and wide kind of feel even though those frets are dressed to look really beautiful and smooth and round on the edges they don't disappear on the end you can still feel the frets i'm not saying that's negative i'm just saying like the the way some of the videos present them is like oh you've never seen frets like this oh they're just so smooth now you can still feel them there are a couple little rough spots on the uh on the wood on the bottom of the neck here all in all without having really played it yet right out of the bag right out of the box i am impressed at 190 i feel like if i saw this hanging on the rack at a local guitar shop a few things would let me know that this is a budget instrument there are channels that i watched that were like oh i wouldn't be able to tell the difference between this and you know a 1500 guitar or whatever that's ridiculous like just looking at this like the plastic on the knobs looks like cheap plastic compared to what you see on more premium instruments like that's such a dumb thing it doesn't affect the playability or the tone at all but you if you've seen enough enough guitars like little things like that pop out like it just looks like a cheap plastic that's like off-brand for the knobs something about the pickups it's hard to communicate what it is but i if by going back into what i was leading into if i saw this on the wall at like a local music shop i would assume it was like a 250 275 dollar instrument i wouldn't think it was you know a thousand dollar like boutique sort of guitar i think those frets i think those frets are impressive especially considering they're stainless steel for a guitar of this price point i'm going to take the plastic off some of the pickups because i know that'll bother me while i'm playing it all right time to turn on amps and try it out i do kind of like that they didn't go with the normal strat input jack cup here they did a bottom side jack here a little bit more modern i'm fully expecting it to be out of tune right yeah [Music] let's make sure everything works that was the neck pickup here's the bridge [Music] sounds pretty twangy kind of feels like the action might be a little bit too low i'm getting some rattling going on somewhere number two position middle [Music] it's certainly got that strat like quack and twang thing going on the number four position [Music] and back to the neck great [Music] it's wired so that the tone control works with just the bridge pickup that's unusual for a strat well i know that it's there's all kinds of versions of strats it used to be unusual for a strap all the pots seem to work they have a decent taper still it's bothering me but it feels like the knobs are touching the pick guard and making like a scraping feeling so um i have a feeling i would just replace these knobs anyways because they look cheap to me and then figure out how to raise them off the pick guard a little bit yeah so far yeah my my impressions are good so far i could definitely say that i could recommend this to like a young guitarist or someone that just needs a strat style guitar in their quiver [Music] it sounds good at least it sounds normal right let's try some drive and some effects and stuff like that this is the earthquaker plumes [Music] [Music] starting to go out of tune a little bit [Applause] [Music] i will say the tuners feel good yeah the tuners feel way better um than the vast majority of sub 200 guitars that i've tried over the years like if these tuners were on any guitar i'd be like oh yeah these these are great tuners there's nothing wrong with them they feel really smooth and really firm not overly firm but they feel correct they feel the correct amount of firmness how about that [Music] [Music] i want to check the intonation it's a little off on the d string but the rest seem to be pretty close to spot on i want to try some surfy sounds now [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] i think the pickups might need to be backed off the strings a little bit i'm getting a really strong like pop vibe from them [Music] boom [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] getting a lot of dark stuff on my fingers some sort of polish or metal residue on those strings that can be a common complaint with uh with newer cheaper guitars [Music] so [Music] try some higher gain stuff here [Music] from [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] foods [Music] it didn't go an abnormal amount of tune after that wiggle stick abuse there's something about the neck that i'm not really connecting to as a comparison i keep going back to the harley benton here fusion 2 where this is a guitar where the neck i instantly bonded with like there's something about it that i connected with immediately um even though it's a modern feeling guitar and i tend to go for more vintage feeling guitars the fusion 2 in my opinion is is trying to be like an ibanez a z and i kind of get that vibe from this too but there's something about the next shape and i think it just needs like it needs a setup i need to set it up to play the way i like a guitar to play there's something that feels a little bit off to me um i don't know what material the nut is but i'm assuming if i you know give it a little bit of a graphite treatment and spend some time dialing in the bridge uh tuning stability won't be a huge issue it seems to be doing just fine i've certainly played guitars that were way less tuning stable out of the box like i just pulled this out of the box and tuned it up and it seems to be doing decent as far as that goes i have all this anxiety now because i'm judging this against watching all these other videos that we're so enthusiastic and i want to make sure i'm giving a full and complete and accurate impression of this for my own viewers i i think if this was presented to me without any information like hey ryan what do you think of this guitar i'm like in a guitar shop they pull it off the wall hey what do you think of this i think my assessment would still land around i think this is like a 250 275 guitar it's you know some name you've never heard of some brand you've never heard of is trying to do some things um it's trying to do a really flat and fast modern neck with the stainless steel frets which i think are contributing a bit to kind of like the bright sparkly nature of this guitar uh to me stainless steel frets tend to be a little bit more like high present more bright present than your normal nickel frets but it's one of those things where like there's some there's some really good qualities to this like the tuners are really nice they feel really nice i didn't know how i would feel about this rounded feeling but there's something very pleasant about that very tactile they're very smooth and they feel the correct amount of firm i have a feeling i'm going to need to graphite the nut to get tuning stability with the trim use i'm not hot on how that trim doesn't really feel like it clicks when it pushes in i'm still not sure it's all the way in and it's just kind of like hangs free which is not what i like but honestly like you can get a really decent wilkinson trim and swap this out for 24 bucks or something like that like i said the knobs look like cheap plastic they're scraping on the pick guard the plastic on the switch tip looks like more of the same cheap plastic there's something about the pickups where visually like you can tell i don't know what it is once when you've seen enough pickups in your life you can tell when they're cheaper there's something about them that feels cheaper this pick guard i hope the camera picks up how incredibly green it is i'm not kidding key lime pie green i don't hate it it was just a bit of a surprise like i'm used to seeing mint green guards on sunburst guitars and having it being a look but this is this is beyond that level of green the matte finish is fine i'm not seeing any notable cosmetic issues that fretwork is very interesting it's honestly one of those things where visually it's very impressive but sitting here running my hand up and down the neck there's something about it where it still feels like like a 250 guitar so what i'm saying that i mean here's the youtuber phrase for the money for the money right guys i think you're getting a decent guitar here the sound of the pickups is completely subjective you either like them or you don't like there's people who like and dislike all kinds of pickups to me they sound usable i don't think i would be running out to swap out these pickups [Music] i think they needed an adjustment i think they're too hot too close to the strings but that's like it's got your normal strat sound [Music] that's like the only srv thing i know yeah the pickups sound fine i'm typically not a fan of uh like the ceramic pickups that would come in kind of like 1990s mexican strats but i'm not getting that overly bright and brittle sort of ceramic sand from them i don't know what the magnets are they might still be ceramic but i'm not getting that that sound that i don't like [Music] do [Music] i'm just going to stack a bunch of [Music] effects [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] all right so do i think that there are youtubers out there that are lying about these guitars i don't think that's what's going on what i noticed is a lot of the smaller maybe newer channels were the ones getting deep into like the exaggerated hyperbolic reactions to this guitar or other guitars from this company this is the this is the cheapest one from this company i know they have guitars ranging all the way up to like 800 bucks or something like that i'd expect that the quality improves a lot i think what's going on is that these these newer channels uh they're not as practiced uh being on camera talking about guitars and you know i can speak from personal experience when i was a newer channel when i was you know new to doing this you lean into trying to be as interesting as you can on camera and so you end up falling into the pitfalls of you know you know the various tropes that youtubers say oh for the money you know like oh it plays like my buddy's 1500 guitar you know things like that it's easy to be impressed and excited on camera when you're new to this i think you should look out for channels that uh you know are very experienced that are leaning into that hyperbolic sort of you know way of talking about guitars have i said hyperbolic too many times but i will say i think there's merit here like i could fully recommend this guitar to a new guitarist that um you know strat curious or is looking for their first guitar this would be a fantastic first guitar um there's a lot of setup that needs to happen here for me to feel comfortable with it there's something the way it's dialed in where i need to make adjustments to the saddles and the action and stuff like that um the way the pickups are in my opinion a little bit too close to the strings and getting that really hard pop sound with certain kinds of playing but it's a strat experience you're getting a strat sound of this you have the full selection of strap sounds there it's nice that you do have a tone control on the bridge pickup which is a bit of a sore spot for a lot of strat owners it honestly makes sense i don't i don't know why the original strats didn't have that the modern the modern feeling of the neck is going to be nice for a lot of players that want a faster more modern like tappable feeling neck but there are things about it where for someone who looks at a lot of guitars like i wouldn't be fooled by this i would not be fooled by this into thinking that it was you know some high-end guitar that i'd never heard of before like it's got a certain qualities to the hardware i think i think with the pickups it's the way that the poles are chromed like higher end pickups don't tend to have chromed magnets on them chromed pull pieces on it i think that's the part that's catching my eye weird like they're metallic but they are the metal that they're made out of they're not chromed yeah all my other guitars even the squires like the the poles don't look chrome they look like the raw metal that they're made out of and i think there's something about that that is catching my eye weird i don't know what do you guys think i feel like i've trapped myself here [Laughter] trying to figure out how to correctly express this guitar in a way where i'm actually i'm accurately representing the guitar and its positive qualities but i'm also letting you know like it's not fooling me i'm not fooled into thinking that this is a high-end guitar the way a lot of the other channels talked about it but i do think it has merit i do think i could recommend it but i would also recommend that there's things that i would change and be aware of like the the way this bar fits in there is funny to me the way the knobs sit on the pickguard the way the plastic looks is funny to me the pickups look funny to me uh but i think they sound fine in this first initial impression anyways i haven't kicked with it i haven't you know listened to the recording yet or anything like that the hard you know the switch feels really solid i think it looks cool it's got a good look if you like a very green pickguard i don't know i feel like i'm stuck in a in a circle right now talking about this thing like i said earlier like put together watch as much content as you can absorb as much information as you can about a product before you pull the trigger find places on the internet where consumers where people who bought them are talking about them pay attention when channels are pointing out negatives and think about those negatives something that i you know an example that i can present about negative reviews is uh i was i was apartment shopping years and years and years years ago when i was first married and every single apartment complex seemed to get three star reviews wherever they were being reviewed but you have to actually read the reviews like a three star review isn't the same for everyone that gives it just means that someone's dissatisfied like some of the reviews were like ah i don't like you know the view from the bathroom window or ugh i was like internet is bad here like it's just not very fast and then you have three star reviews that are like the landlord is stealing money from me and there's bed bugs those are two very different three star reviews and i think you've got to consider that when you're looking at information for instruments and guitars like i feel like i can give this a good review for its price point for the money for the money i think this shoots above its class i think it's better than a 190 guitar i think it's about sixty dollars better than that i don't think it's a thousand dollars better than that where if i was comparing this to a thousand dollar guitar i'd be like wow something's wrong this is a bad guitar if i was if i was legitimately comparing it to a high earned instrument is that fair all right thanks for watching please like subscribe just like leave me rude and nasty comments of course on patreon you know the you know the drill buy a shirt if you're naked and stay grounded bye everybody you

Channel: 60 Cycle Hum

Views: 151,390

Keywords: Cheap guitars, 60 cycle hum, eart strat, eart stratocaster, eart sss guitar, eart guitar review, eart stainless steel frets, stainless steel frets, ryan burke, demo, review, unboxing, truth, youtuber lies, EART Electric Guitar SSS Single Coil Pickups, guitar max, darrell braun guitar, cheap guitar review, cheap stratocaster, affordable stratocaster, amazon stratocaster, amazon guitar, amazon guitars, eart guitar, headless guitar, eart guitars

Id: bE0GRlEbzzA

Length: 39min 33sec (2373 seconds)

Published: Sat May 08 2021