This guitar was a bit out of my price range when I was looking last year, but I thought if it played like a dream, I'd incur a little extra debt. Suffice to say, it didn't play like a dream. The pickups were standard (which means you'd probably want to upgrade--I personally am not looking for a lot of power) but I was mostly surprised by the rather high action. Now, I played it at Guitar Center, and it may be a shotty set up was part of the problem, but I think I can say with some level of confidence that this guitar cannot really compare with its higher-cost brethren. I went with an Ibanez RG3EXQM1 etc.,etc. (who named this thing?), which I think plays way better, but the pickups are really pretty weak, not really suitable for metal--but the clean sounds really nice, and that's why I plan on keeping it. In this price range, I would recommend Schecter. I got that Vampira model a few years ago and it plays nice and the stock pickups are pretty good (with coil tap), plus it looks like the fucking shit. I just got an amazing deal on the Lady Luck on ebay, so wish me luck that it's even better (it easily could be; it has a set neck--I'm too excited). But anyway, I think there are better guitars out there in this price range, but to each his own, but I recommend buying it from a place where you can play it to make sure that it plays as well as you hope.
