Alvarez RD260CESB Regent Dreadnought Cutaway Acoustic-Electric Guitar Sunburst

Most Liked Negative Review

Decent Guitar But With Some Issues

I purchased this guitar on sale 40% off and for the money, it was a decent guitar but I did return it. First, let me compliment GC on their return policy, I tried it for about a week and returned it to my local GC which saved me from paying return shipping and they were very nice. I purchased this specifically as a beater guitar to use in bad weather or grunge gigs when I wanted to protect my nice guitars. My main objective is decent tone and usable electronics. I replaced the stock strings with .12s when I got it so my experiences are with nicer strings. The pros: Lightweight, great feeling neck, tuner is very good, looks nice, fit and finish are not perfect but pretty good for this price range, intonation was spot-on, playability was good I liked the satin back/sides with gloss top--looks snazzy and feels great. The cons: Tone, while lively, has no depth--it's very thin sounding and treble focused. It wasn't bad overall and the sound wasn't dead which is a problem you may face at this price range, but compare it to anything with at least a solid top and it's lacking. Then again, it's a laminate guitar so you'd expect a lower quality of tone. Quite a bit of fret-sprout and sharp frets which you could have taken care of at you local luthier but still not fun. Capoed, the sound was very shrill and unusable anywhere above the 2nd fret-it just sounded bad. The main reason I sent it back was the capoed tone and the pickup. Plugged in, the highest 2 strings were 50-75% louder than the rest of the strings even when I had the treble turned all the way down and it just sounded bad. There was no way I could use this in a gig setting. If the electronics were not so unbalanced and if the capoed sound was not so bad, I would've kept it. You may get one and like the super bright sound and your pickup may be balanced. Tone is subjective and the overall look, feel, quality and setup are quite good. It's worth a try.