They Say This Is A Pro Level Guitar For $299

I think that some of those bigger Brands really need to think about adding some of these cool features to their guitars if they're going to stay in those price points and stay competitive in today's Deep dive we're going to be checking out a Boya and ziki guitar this video is brought to you by Sweetwater and line six we're going to be using the Catalyst 60 watt to do the sound samples for this guitar so I want to thank the people at Sweetwater and line six because this is not only what we're using today this is the amp we're going to be using going forward for all guitars that we review under 500 because this amp is 299 dollars as you know I really like the Catalyst but especially the 60 because this is a smaller amplifier and it works perfect for what I need it for I wanted to use an amp when I'm doing the sound demonstrations of guitars that are sub 500 that is more likely to be something that someone will be listening for or looking for for their own personal collections instead of like a three thousand dollar Boutique amp or something like that so we'll be using the Catalyst and the sound samples so this guitar has a a lot of promises and a very low price point it is the bzk024 modern series huh I wonder where they got that name from but more importantly it's it's feature set it is stainless steel Frets a two-point tremolo with brass Saddles you have a five piece roasted Maple neck mahogany body with a poplar Burl veneer these are some serious appointments for a guitar that is 359 dollars that's 359 dollars shipped by the way with free returns from Amazon this is a hard thing to not want to check out so let's get into it thoughts out of the box a couple things is the Frets are sprouted a little bit so a little sharp on the ends the action is very high and the truss rod had to be uh tightened because it was completely loose but even completely tightened the action's still high so it has to be addressed in the geeky stuff and also the tone knob is just kind of falling off because it's not it's not secured on properly so we'll take care of that as well other than that let's talk about some of the things it comes with it comes with the tremolo arm that's a push in style tremolo arm and it needs to be compressed there's a allen wrench adjustment Maybe oh right there yeah and it needs to be compressed um comes with a standard uh basic guitar cable and it comes with the adjustment tools so you have Allen wrenches and of course an adjustment tool for the truss rod you have a spindle style truss rod there so pretty basic stuff but good looking guitar for the price point all right let's get into the geeky stuff starting with the headstock we have a poplar Burl veneer top that's a polyurethane gloss finish with the Indian Laurel fretboard and a bone nut 24 stainless steel Frets with a mahogany body and another Poplar veneer on the front of the guitar now looking at the back we have six 18 to 1 tuning Keys these are non-locking with a five piece neck that is roasted and natural roasted and non-roasted maple I should say so you have roasted Maple regular Maple roasted regular roasted and then that comes down to the body and then you have a mahogany body and this is a two-piece mahogany body but for some reason the bottom piece is the right here and then this is the second piece so interesting way instead of not centering it so I'm not sure what the uh the idea there is you have a neck joint with furls this is what we call the handshake when we hold it like here it's pretty thick on the hand and even though it's rounded it's not super comfortable it's not doing anything to make it much different than just a standard Fender style a little better because it's rounded it doesn't have the plate but again not Ultra comfortable when holding the heel something else to notice too is that there's a hairline crack right there on the neck joint and this looks like a crack but it's actually a dog hair another thing to mention is that nowhere on this guitar is any markings not only where it's made but no serial numbers nothing there's nothing on this guitar in any way first thing we want to do is tune the guitar which I did and now the guitar is in tune we want to check neck relief what I want to show you guys is that there is quite a bit of relief in this neck as you can see in fact so much so I'm going to take this pick and just slide it in right there so you can see it's quite a bit of relief and the one thing we're going to notice right away is that the truss rod is maxed out in other words it's relieved all the way so there's no tension on this neck whatsoever so we want to go ahead and address that now to adjust the tension it's pretty straightforward we're just going ahead and turn this and obviously we want to get some tension on this neck and I I have to do this for the video purposes but I want to take a second and explain that I like to make adjustments in the playing position in other words seated down like this in your lap this is the best way to do it but it's a little difficult to make videos that way so it's going to be on the bench for video purposes okay so now what we want to do is take a look at the action and we're seeing it at 1.75 or 0.07 so pretty good so obviously that adjustment made a big big difference on getting that action dialed in what we have here is 24 stainless frets let's go ahead and check this and these are medium jumbo Frets so that's pretty nice not jumbos not really big but they're medium jumbo so they're pretty tall if you like a fret where your fingers really don't touch the fretboard this is going to have a very light touch response in other words your finger will barely touch the fretboard with these Frets if they were a little taller you wouldn't touch the fretboard at all with your finger checking the scale length we're showing this at 25 and a half inches and we'll check the intonation and also I have a video in the description that teaches you how to do that in just seconds okay so let's go ahead and check the nut and the easiest fast way to do that is just to go ahead and press down on the third fret and check the play between the the string and the first fret as you can see there's a little bit of play there so what that means is they could have cut the slots a little lower but it's not the worst thing because the worst thing is if they cut the slots too deep but overall the quality of what they did looks good check these Frets for high spots we have one high fret right here yep okay so this is our high fret right here so you'll notice no issue there a little bit more Buzz there no issue there Buzz there so that's going to be a problem so we're going to go ahead and fix that the first thing we're going to do is Mark that fret let's go ahead and finish the rest okay so all that and only that one fret this one right here this is the only one that's a problem he said to fix that fret I'm going to show you a couple things and I'm going to show you a couple cool little tools that I use the first one is going to be the tremolo buddy so to use the tremolo buddy it's pretty straightforward you're just going to put it right underneath here and clamp this down like so once that's clamped just go ahead and put the tremolo arm right here underneath this pad and there's a little indention right underneath this pad for this tremolo arm go ahead push it down so it locks everything's good to go and then go ahead and just start releasing the tension so now that the tension's all relieved on this I'm going to go ahead and put the strings on the side and I just want to show you again this tremolo buddy how cool this is you can see that it's just holding it in place and of course you can just show them a pack of strings or something underneath there or some business cards uh this is just to show you a cool tool I've been using and I really like it I have a full video on it if you want to check it out now what we want to do is go ahead and prep this for fixing that high fret so what we're going to do is just go ahead and use some painters tape and that will keep the strings out of the way so that's all clear now and then we're going to use the stumac Fret kisser which is like a fret rocker it's a little thick and it has it's like built-in sandpaper or a file whatever you want to kind of look at it like what's important is I have a hack on how to basically make this take a piece of 400 grit paper with double stick or put double stick tape on it cut yourself off a little strip like so and then wrap it around your fret rocker now this is important you want to painters tape the Frets you are not going to be sanding because the front rocker is abrasive compared to the Fret kisser that I used earlier the reason why you want it adhesive on the Sandpaper is because you want it to be perfectly flat you don't want it rounded this is not ideal but it works perfectly and you'll be able to achieve the same results but this is so easy I just want to show it to you guys you just basically put it right here and move it from side to side okay and then now what we want to do is you can use your crowning file I'm using the Z file but you can use a crowning file and you just want to do a light pass right over that fret just very light because again we didn't take very much material off and then then we're just going to polish it and you can use a fret eraser or steel wool or micro mesh pads I would actually just do all the Frets and just make sure they're all polished at that point might as well do it go ahead and look at that fret and you can see now she's good to go let's go ahead and do a sock test and it's sounds like popcorn that's pretty rough and you can see it's even chewed there and I'll do this one section right here just so you can see it's yeah it's pretty um pretty rough let's do the other side for the base side and uh yeah I'm gonna say still pretty rough even a hole right there a couple holes so definitely for both sides I'm gonna say a one out of five before I continue I'm going to go ahead and fix those I'm going to put a link to a video that shows you how you can fix your front end if they're sharp like this but to give you reference this guitar ended up taking me about 35 to almost 40 minutes to go ahead and take care of all those spread ends so now let's check to see how gritty the Frets are and you know what's funny is I would say they were good if they were nickel I would say these are good but a stainless steel they're a little gritty a little grittier than what I would expect to see stainless steel but nothing to complain about now checking the fretboard radius it is showing about 16 inch radius and it is not a compound radius fretboard so it's just 16 all the way up and down the fretboard is not rolled it's not a rolled Edge it's not extremely sharp it's soft to the touch but again it's not rolled over if you like the really rolled over Edge I don't know if you'll like this but this is not harsh the next shape they have listed as a c and what I'm finding is it is actually not only a c it's a Gibson Les Paul style 50s C carve so it would be it's in that vein for sure so not the typical Fender C but more of a chunky Gibson c car the first fret is 23.12 millimeters or 0.910 and the 12th fret is coming in at 0.977 or 24.83 millimeters thick the nut is 42.05 millimeters or 1.655 and the 12th fret is 2.021 or 51.36 millimeters so let's go ahead and look at these pickups and we're going to see that the bridge is at 16.49 K or 16.50 k neck pickup is sitting in at 7.50 so definitely go in for that I'll let go 2 vintage sound here and definitely the more aggressive probably a full shred that's probably what they're going after so looking at this bridge pickup at 16.5 K we're going to go ahead and coil split it and that's dropping it down to 8.25 and on that neck it's going to drop it down to 3.72 so of course this is going to sound pretty thin as a single coil this has a pretty good shot that's sounding like a pretty decent single coil let's go ahead and look at the inductance and on that neck pickup we're going to be at 3.83 and on this bridge pickup 6.23 so let's look inside the cavity what we have in here of course is a three-way blade switch on a PCB board you have a push-pull pot right here this is a 500K push-pull pot and then a 500K mini Alpha style pot you have no shielding inside the cavity or on the back of the plate this appears to be plastic and it was really stuck in there how to use my trusty dent puller to pull that out these you can get at Harbor Freight for about two bucks and they work fantastic if you haven't seen how you do this you basically that's it push down so check these out for two bucks at Harbor Freight we have a recessed plate for the electronics we have a top mounted plate for the tremolo two Springs which is standard for this this is buffing compound this stuff right here and then of course you have the output Jack and it's a pretty basic inexpensive output Jack interesting spacer they have their own plastic spacer but uh everything pretty inexpensive but it's accurately done so interestingly enough the electronics is not shielded however if you look in here you can definitely see let's go ahead touch those two points you can see that the pickup cavities are shielded let's make sure not to touch that you can see there so they are shielded the pickups have no markings of any kind to tell you what they are I even looked underneath this pad there's no markings on the pickup whatsoever and for those of you that are curious this guitar came in at about seven and a half pounds now as far as market comparables like I said this is 359 dollars and it does compare with guitars like the Charvel dk24 even though that guitar doesn't come with stainless steel Frets it also Compares with the Harley Benton Fusion Series which is similar spec to this guitar and about the same price 359 and of course there's the island is AZ again at 1400 and then the shiji guitars which are very nice comparably but more than double the price this guitar to me is not in the same league as the shiji the Charvel and the Ibanez but it is in league exactly with the Harley Benton a lot of the things I like and dislike about this guitar I had exact similar experiences with Harley Benton okay so let's go ahead and check out the way it sounds we're going to start with the clean Channel or the clean Channel I set up on the Catalyst mic'd up with an sm57 and of course a room mic I have it set on the clean amp I am not using any boost I have the gain as you can see about a quarter turned up that's another dog hair I have my base mid and treble about 12 o'clock a little bit of presence the channel volume and I'm only using the Reverb and no additional effects so let's get to it we're gonna start with the neck pickup volume and tone full forward foreign [Music] pretty nice okay let's go ahead and go into the middle position [Music] I like that I want to hear how it sounds coil split here we go wow it really drops in volume [Music] let's go to the neck pickup here's the neck humbucker [Music] coil slit okay [Music] it's a massive drop off in volume for the the coil splits I don't know if it's going to come across in the video but just be aware something that you're going to have to think about we're at the bridge now look for a bridge pickup curious to see if this coils put this thing let's try the tone control [Music] [Music] okay let's try the overdrive on the amp for the overdrive I'm going to be using the crunch amp setting and my controls look like this I'm not using any boost I have the gain about just short of halfway I have the base mid and treble almost at noon I have a little bit of presence the channel volume set I am using a little bit of a delay in the effects and of course some Reverb and this is on the bridge pickup [Applause] [Music] foreign [Music] [Applause] [Music] bridge is working great for just a slight tremolo [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] let's go to the neck pickup [Music] I want to try the coil split now here's the neck coil split [Music] foreign [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] so some final thoughts on this guitar it's 360 dollars so you're never going to really beat up a Guitar that's priced less than some of the most basic Squire guitars and epiphones on the market it's impressive guitar for what it is I thought the pickup sounded pretty good tuning Keys seem fine the nut seemed fine and other than some fret dressing and stuff needed on the Frets the overall quality of the guitar seemed pretty legitimate if you were buying this guitar and you thought okay what is it would cost me to have someone's work done I would expect that you would have to put up to 200 250 worth of Labor into this if you took it into a shop um that is what I would think that some of your costs are you could do all that stuff yourself of course just by watching some videos including mine and save yourself a lot of money and make yourself a pretty good guitar it's impressive to see what these companies still keep putting out for the price points I hope this really drives some of the market I I think I'd like to see some of the bigger Brands maybe take notice the fact that they're getting a lot of quality features look I we already know the bigger brands are going to be more money that's not the question of hey they should drop their prices really what it is is I just don't think bigger brands for two to three times the price should be allowing no on name no name manufacturers basically new brands come in and just just hit you with every feature you can think of I think that some of those bigger Brands really need to think about adding some of these cool features to their guitar bars if they're going to stay in those price points and stay competitive that's just my thoughts on that as always guys I want to thank you so much for your time till the next time know your gear [Music]

Channel: Phillip McKnight

Views: 269,878

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Id: HyCZ8cUGawk

Length: 21min 50sec (1310 seconds)

Published: Tue May 09 2023