I Have No Idea What This Guitar Is...But I Can't Stop Playing It!

so what exactly is an e-a-r-t guitar well a bunch of you guys were asking me to review one so here we are it's one of the more interesting guitars i've had in the studio in a while so let's jump in and check this thing [Music] out [Applause] [Music] welcome back to the channel i hope you guys are having a great day today well we've got a subscriber requested review in the studio here actually a bunch of you guys kept asking me daryl can you check out these eart guitars now i'd never heard of them before but i headed over to amazon and you know at first look it just sort of seemed like another overseas company making you know their version of famous guitars i was like well do i want to look at this thing or not but i looked a little closer and it turns out like they put stainless steel frets on all their entry-level guitars something i've never seen before and they all have roasted maple necks so i was like okay well this is getting a little more interesting so i went ahead and ordered one and i figured well if i'm gonna see what these eart guitars are all about let's see what they can do with like a semi hollow i figure any company can kind of slap out you know strat style guitar or tele uh but what about a semi-hollow i think that might tell me a little bit more about this company than you know just a solid body guitar so here we are with the eart e335 let's jump in and check this thing out right now this guitar is a little confusing i know in my mind where it should fit in with the market with the other guitars in its price range and i've featured a lot of you know 335 clones on this channel a couple fireflies uh indio boardwalk harley benton i think it's the hb 35 and now the eart so i know in my mind where this guitar should fit in with the others the firefly are kind of like the really affordable entry you know great value guitars uh india boardwalk is a step up harley benton is another step up now this e-a-r-t is another step up so this guitar retails for i think it was three 389 us i think so just under 400 bucks so it's sitting above the harley benton and still i think about 150 bucks cheaper than like an epiphone or something like that so i know in my mind where this should sit in the price tier the problem is when i go to play it so the problem lies with my left hand as soon as i start playing this guitar it's telling my brain you're playing a very expensive guitar a two thousand a three thousand dollar guitar but my brain knows that's not true and it's very confusing so yes we're going to talk about the fret work here uh and really this is one of the reasons why i decided to feature it on the channel because it does have stainless steel frets so let's dive in and talk about that because that is one of the biggest deals of this eart guitar so this guitar has some of the nicest fretwork i've played on any guitar like ever which is an insane statement i know but it's true it blows away anything i've ever played on a gibson on a prs on a fender yeah it's insane so let's take a closer look at that and we'll actually do a little comparison between this very very expensive gibson and this relatively cheap e-a-r-t guitar so anyway when we look at the front face of the frets you can see they're crazy shiny they're beaming so sliding vibrato bending all of that on this guitar is beautiful it's just straight out of the box you don't have to do anything and when we talk about like the harley bentons the the boardwalk the firefly all of them were very gritty on the front face and needed to be polished or or played in none of that here it's just ready to go and beautiful and when we look at the fret ends it gets even more crazy so when we zoom in you can see how rounded off they are a fret treatment i've only really seen i think on ibanez guitars so and pretty expensive ones but yeah the fret end treatment uh just rounded off so smooth uh a very very premium you know feel now when we contrast that with this very expensive gibson in canada here a les paul standards like 3 500 bucks something like that uh insanely expensive uh well on the gibson you can see you know there's still tooling marks on the fret ends you know they're shaped nicely uh but when we look back at that eirt it's just a night and day difference so that's why i keep coming back to this guitar and playing it that left hand experience is just so high end and so beautiful now of course we'll talk about the overall construction in a second and if the rest of the guitar is good uh and of course give you guys a bunch of tones but that's one of the the the features on this guitar that i really wanted to look at is these stainless steel frets and they're awesome there's nothing bad to say about it and even the way the guitar was set up it was just set up to play beautiful low action no buzzing and as i mentioned i just went out and randomly bought it so you know if anyone else does that hopefully you'll have the same experience as well but overall like yeah a plus plus on this part of the guitar let's check out the rest of the specs and give you guys some tones now as for the official specs well there's almost nothing online it says it's got a mahogany top a mahogany back a roasted maple neck rosewood fingerboard stainless steel frets and that's about it nothing about you know the tuning machines the nut the hardware the pickups all of that is a mystery so we'll look at that and go through the guitar with a fine-tooth comb uh in a second but let's plug this thing in and see what it sounds like obviously that's hugely important we know it plays well but let's check out some tones all right you guys let's do some informal noodling and just see if we can figure out what this guitar sounds like let's start the neck pick up here [Laughter] well right away i'm noticing good string to string volume there's no string that's like louder than the other so a great balance yeah and just very very warm and full let's try this tone control i'm going to back it off a little bit here [Music] so a good range on that tone pot for sure let's try the middle pickup doing the same kind of thing [Music] again really nice and balanced let's try the bridge see if it's uh super powerful and honky or if it's got just nice chime here we go [Music] a little bit hotter for sure [Music] yeah overall great sounding pickups let's add a little bit of boost here i'm gonna stay on channel one i'm playing through my mezza barba so we'll just boost channel one here [Music] [Applause] oh nice okay well let's go over to channel two uh which has a little bit more gain so [Applause] oh [Applause] you know pretty good sustain and ringing out right up here at the very very top lots of guitars kind of die out there or you don't get you know clear clean and clear tones up there uh so overall pretty great let's go over to channel three and maybe just do some chugging we better go right to the the bridge pickup there now right away it's not feeding back and it doesn't seem too microphonic or whatever uh some of the fireflies guitars i think uh spoke too soon maybe it's about to feedback anyway some of the firefly guitars had trouble with being microphonic this one doesn't seem to be too bad that way and we got quite a bit of gain here [Music] oh so definitely not super hot pickups or whatever nothing with mid scoop there's tons of mids there um so yeah it gives a good sound let's try uh yeah maybe up on the neck with uh that that gain there as well [Applause] [Applause] yeah i mean not much to complain about when it comes to the tones on this guitar certainly on par with uh i think of the three brands like the firefly the indio the harley benton i mean i had some issues with all of those guitars um but i think i like the pickups the best on the harley benton and i think these ones are on par with those at least so um i don't think you're gonna struggle getting some good balance tones some creamy leads um some jazzy tones and you know even some some okay ish high high-gain tones but i think you'd really want to scoop out your amp because these pickups definitely are like kind of more fuller traditional style pickups so yeah overall pretty impressed with the tones so nothing weird with the pickups or the electronics everything functions as it should the three-way switch doesn't feel amazing but it gets the job done we actually have full-size pots under here too which is great i can't see the brand but i can see that they're full size so that is great now the first thing i wanted to do when talking about like the overall construction or the overall picture of this guitar was throw it on the scale because this guitar feels very very light but i wasn't quite prepared for this i threw it up there and it's just over six pounds it's like 6.2 pounds that's phenomenal i think my epiphone bb king model signature model was like closer to eight and a half that's like two and a half pounds more than this one so it's six just over six pounds and there's no hint of like headstock dive at all i guess you guys can't see that but anyway uh yeah there's no diving like this at all partially due to i think the the shape of the headstock uh but obviously on the style of guitar there's a lot of weight because of the the size of that so it just sits perfectly you know ergonomically the 335 design is not going to be amazing like compared to a strat or something like that but it's light crazy light so love that but let's talk about like the overall construction and some of the parts and take a look at them in closer detail so let's look at the headstock shape looks really nice it's quite attractive to me and then you can see the eart logo up there and on the back side you can see they're just unbranded tuners but this guitar has been holding tune like a champ they feel okay maybe you know might be due for an upgrade but you know overall this guitar you know whatever i played five or six minutes straight for you guys and lots of banding and that kind of stuff and it just holds tuned so overall i think that's good now when we move on to the nut nothing's listed as to the material so i can only guess but you know some of the entry-level guitars like the firefly i think and some of the others have bone nuts here i have no idea all i can say is it's hyper clean like it's very very clean so that's a good sign and it holds tuned that's another great sign so overall i think the nut the headstock the tuning machine it's a nice design you know you don't have too extreme headstock tilt back there so that's great as well um and then when we look at the neck we've already talked about the fretwork we'll talk about that some more in a second uh but it says it's roasted maple uh i have no idea because the whole thing is tinted so i can't tell one way or the other now as for the rest of the neck the fingerboard the binding well it's a little hit and miss construction wise it's really good and as i mentioned those frets are amazing uh but there's like spots where stain has kind of dripped out onto the the binding and onto the fret ends um that just needs to be cleaned up and when i spend almost 400 bucks u.s so by the time it gets to me in canada it was like closer to 500 bucks i don't want to have to do that i think that should have been done and should have been caught and when we look at these upper upper frets here you can see how ugly it is um number one the fret ends way up high are still sublime i gotta say that like all those fret ends just kill they're so awesome uh but they're ugly like that stain should have been removed so a little bit of a hit and miss and some of the same things that i went through with like yeah the harley benton the boardwalk the firefly same kind of stuff that you kind of wish wasn't on this guitar because it is more expensive than the others um so yeah that is what it is now in terms of um yeah the rest of the stuff looks really good even the way the posts are attached to the body sometimes even on epiphones you'll see like these back posts tilting forward or popping up or doing this or that none of that here it just looks really good and really well made when we look at the f hole binding super nice again and on some of these guitars again it's been hit and miss where that binding is just super ugly on our on like a beautiful guitar and happy to say here on both sides very very clean and overall the binding is quite nice on this there's no you know on the body itself there's no stain or there's no discoloration or anything like that just on the neck there i think they must have been staining the fingerboard or doing something i don't know but uh yeah overall the rest of it is pretty good now i should mention something that you cannot see on the on amazon or any of the pictures is the the finish on this body is an open pore finish and i've seen that on a few guitars and i think i know why they did it i'll take some close-ups so you guys can see what you know i mean it's like where you purposely do a thin finish so that the grain comes through and you can feel the texture of the grain and i think that's just to give this guitar sort of a vintage flair right it is a vintage looking guitar so i think they did that open pour finish you know to kind of give it that worn in you know 60s look or 50s look you know like uh an old school guitar and on the neck it is just straight satin so you know they did it on the body on purpose um and i do like the the satin finish on the neck by the way that's nice yeah but overall i think the combination of like an open pore finish it might be hard to see but when you hold the guitar you can clearly see it and the bright white binding just kind of doesn't do it for me i think if you're gonna go with an open pore finish go with a cream binding that would kind of like complement the look but this bright white binding looks brand new and the rest of the body is sort of made to look old so i would say either give this guitar like a thick clear coat finish like you would see on most guitars or go with cream binding and stick with the open pore so got to say that and there are some finish runs there are some spots where you can see i don't know if it's sawdust or this or that or you know under the finish so it's not like super premium on the finish overall i'd say it's well done but it's not perfect now another little cool touch that you definitely don't see on 335 style guitars is you've got sort of like the swing gate truss rod adjustment cover so you don't have to break out the screwdriver you can use a pick or just your finger flip open the the cavity cover make your adjustment and then just snap it back in place and you're done so that's kind of like a nice little touch but overall i would say it's a well-made guitar again with guitars in this price range you're going to end up with a few little quirks in the finish or you know like i said some of that stain on the binding you know nothing that's going to be a deal breaker but you're going to find them on guitars in this price range the big difference here is the playability and compared to as i mentioned the ones that i've featured on this channel the harley benton the boardwalk the firefly i've done full and very detailed um you know demos on those guitars uh this is a nicer guitar than all of those for sure it plays nicer and it's lighter than all of them um so it is a good guitar but it is more expensive as i said i think it's 389 um so you're going to be spending more money but is it a good guitar well yes it's lightweight but most importantly it plays like way more than it's worth and certainly better playing than all those other brands so that's great so anyway that's my experience obviously i've only played one of these guitars so i can't speak to you know their other styles but so far i mean very surprised at this guitar and i can overlook some of the things you know like the finished open poor finish and that kind of stuff just because when i pick it up and play it it's such a great experience and i'm it kind of catches me off guard every time like i pick it up and i'm like what am i playing here it's so weird so it's a joy to play and that's the main thing when you buy a guitar you'll want to enjoy it so yes there's going to be some quirks on these and i have no idea what they're you know as i said this is the first guitar i've ever played of there so i don't know what you know the quality control is like on all these brands you know it's going to take some time and some user reviews as more and more people you know take a chance really on these guitars but overall a great experience for me i hope you guys enjoyed the demo um yeah it was a bit of a surprise a bit of a mixed bag overall very very positive though so this is the e-a-r-t e-335 thanks so much for watching be sure to subscribe to the channel if you haven't done so yet all my information link to the guitars all that stuff will be down in the video description below other than that have yourself a great day

Channel: Darrell Braun Guitar

Views: 588,848

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Id: f67iQ8_oNGk

Length: 19min 55sec (1195 seconds)

Published: Fri Jun 04 2021