I Bought the Ultimate Budget "335" Guitar. I wanted to hate it...

what's up everybody this is steve sterlachy and today we are looking at the famous firefly 338 from amazon and from guitarsgarden.com this has become quite the internet sensation there's a lot of people talking about these guitars so i went out and bought my own i bought mine from guitar's garden because they were out of stock on amazon i saw all these people talking about what a great guitar these are what a great guitar these are what great guitars that these are these firefly guitars a lot of people are really really thrilled with theirs so i originally bought this fully expecting to hate it and to uh you know be a tone stop about it and find every little error that i could find with it find every little issue with the guitar and i have to say this thing is blowing me away like it is beyond anything that i expected i mean look at that top i feel like for the price range that is absolutely insane which by the way let's talk about this is the highest end model that uh firefly offers this is the spalted maple 338 and this goes for a whopping 198 dollars before shipping so a top like this a guitar that just looks like this for 198 bucks i was thinking i can buy this and i can modify it i can hot rod it and do whatever i want to it and it's going to be great because it's such a good looking guitar i really dig it if you look at the the ears here this is kind of like reminiscent of a late 60s gibson when the mickey mouse ears started to wear down they started to go to this pointy thing i think that was like 66 or so is when those were really um a thing if you look at any late 60s gibson's you'll see that pointy um horn shape here on both ends which is really cool um it's a fully set neck made just like a gibson would be pretty much look at the look at the back like look at the look at the quality of the wood that um that you get with this looks awesome so let's talk about some of the specs on these guitars because there's nothing on the website if you look at guitar's garden or you look at amazon when you see these there's just nothing like zero the only things that it says is that it's an electric guitar and it comes with a bone nut so a really nice stock feature is that this is a bone nut it's actually cut really well so it's not your typical import guitar obviously these are made in china i didn't mention that before these are made in china and usually when you get a import guitar like this the nut is going to be terrible but for some reason this nut is actually really good it may be slightly high but other than that it's perfectly playable and great out of the box like beyond impressive for 198 guitar i mean you can go to a tech and spend eighty dollars on a bone nut and have it you know fit perfectly to the guitar and this one comes stock with a really nice bone so that's a big big plus the hardware and everything on here is really nice it's a regular tuna matic bridge with the flat um flathead screw pieces that you you know adjust your action height that way the pots feel fine like they have a nice little turn to them they're not too light they're not too heavy and the switch is actually really stiff in a good way the tuners are you know kind of the stock no name brand but they actually are really good i never thought i would demo tuners or for anything but take a look at this so normally when you would get an import guitar the tuning pegs would be all over the place and the tuning stability would be crazy but listen to how nothing gets bound up in this so i'm not trying to be here with my tuning here i just wanted to show that there's no binding in the nut and there's no like plinking usually you could tell it's a bad nut or some crappy tuners when you get an inconsistent um twist on the ratio with the tuners like how fast you need to turn it um it's really consistent and there's no slipping in the bone so this guitar stays in tune great on its own and the tuna matic is actually really really good it doesn't have one of those retaining wires like a lot of the cheaper guitars have that make a rattling noise so listen to what this thing sounds like unplug this is just with the the mic here see how much we get that ring out so it's got crazy good sustain i'm like this this thing still surprises the heck out of me let's talk for a second about what i had to do to it out of the box so these are still the stock strings these shipped from guitar's garden with what would appear to be d'addario strings because of the color coding that you could see in the back there so i i'm pretty sure these are d'addario strings the only thing about the frets is that some of them are a little flat so it's almost like somebody just kind of blanket leveled these and didn't take the appropriate time to crown them and polish them up properly which is not a big deal you have some some scratchiness if you can hear that a little bit of a scratchiness to some frets there's only like two or three spots on the whole guitar but that's going to be fixed with some fine sandpaper and some polishing compound that'll be great if you want to see me do that in a separate video type in the comments and i'll um i'll video when i do that um the only thing that i did to it it comes with this really ugly pick guard and this really crappy poker chip like a uh like a les paul would have on the uh on the pickup selector so i ditched the two of those other than that i just flathead screwed brought the action down a little bit and that's really it intonation is really good um no problems i didn't even need to do any intonation setup it came perfectly playable and like professionally playable not just like for 198 guitar playable like i could take this to a gig and play it today out of the box it's that good so as expected with a guitar in this price range you're going to have a couple of finishing flaws but compared to other ones even double and triple the price it's pretty hard to find the flaws in here obviously the polyurethane and the paint are really caked on here um this is probably just like a regular veneer top it's not gonna be a very thick top but i mean who really cares like in today's today's day of guitars like where you can get an import guitar on a great cnc a great cnc program that makes a great guitar really who cares um other knocks that people would complain about is that it's got the scarf joint neck which is only a problem if you know what it is and have read that it's bad on forums you have no feeling at all here you don't feel that there's a scarf joint here which means that the headstock is a separate piece of wood than the neck but it's glued together i'm sure with plenty of wood glue and then the really thick polyurethane over it doesn't make any difference you could never feel that there's a scarf joint there and it doesn't bother me as much as um as much as you read about it would be online and um yeah other little finish things uh some of the bindings a little bit you know not perfect but i have handmade you know 3 000 guitars that have some finish imperfections in them nothing more nothing less than this but overall it's a really great feeling guitar and the pickups are pretty okay we're going to plug them in they're not my favorite but again this price range i could put a set of pickups that are double the cost of the guitar and it'll be a great guitar so again here's how it comes stock from guitar's garden out of the box same strings did nothing to it besides lower the action a little bit let's plug it in [Music] so [Music] [Music] bye [Music] bye [Music] um and then [Music] so [Music] so [Music] [Music] so hmm [Applause] so [Applause] [Music] [Music] [Applause] uh [Music] [Music] so that is the firefight 338 and spalted maple this is an incredible guitar for the price range i would highly recommend checking one of these out again i wanted to hate this guitar so much after reading all the great reviews about it thinking that it was all bs and you know people being paid to say stuff but bought this with my own money uh my own opinions on the review and i am blown away with this it looks so good look at that top i keep staring at this thing all right that's enough for this video um thank you guys for watching ask questions below and as always thank you and i will see in the next one

Channel: Steve Sterlacci

Views: 222,607

Keywords: play guitar, guitar lesson, guitar tutorial, electric guitar, guitar music, guitar lessons, guitar modeler, helix, line 6 helix, digital modeling, digital guitar amp, guitars, canon m50, beginner guitar, firefly guitar, ff338, amazon guitar, amazon basics, affordable guitar, es335, gibson es 335 copy, cheap guitar, famous guitar, firefly ff 338, spalted maple, spalted maple guitar, ultimate budget guitar, darrell braun guitar, firefly guitar review, firefly guitars 2021

Id: MN0xBravmRg

Length: 13min 56sec (836 seconds)

Published: Wed Mar 03 2021