Chapman ML1 Modern V2 Baritone Electric Guitar Abyss

This is a great playing guitar, and a very nice feeling baritone. The 28 inch scale feels bigger than what I'm used to for a Bari but it still plays great. My only issue is that the stock pickups, as crunchy as they are, are a little too Bass heavy for my liking, and seem to "Boom" when using a good amount of distortion. Otherwise, Awesome Guitar, at an even better price point! Definitely would recommend to anyone looking for an affordable Mid-range baritone

Very nice quality for the price. Strings were old but that's not really a big deal. Feels amazing to play.

I wanted to like this guitar. Most reviews on it are very good and it's one of the few baritones on the market right now. But, it was not to be. First, the guitar arrived only in bubble wrap in shipping box. There was no Chapman-branded box, labels, warranty, hex wrenches, or other accessories. Maybe it was a return or demo? I ordered a new guitar, not a demo. The neck was severely warped, up-bowed, all strings hitting frets and buzzing. The tuning was super high, and strings stretched way tight, well beyond E standard (this is a B std. baritone). The output jack had a loose, rattling nut (I tightened that at least). The fret work left sharp edges – not smooth to run your hand or a cloth along the neck. The finish has ripples and imperfections - not great for a guitar of this price. The neck pickup is mounted tilted and is supposed to be level, like the bridge pickup. The tone pot has an incorrect taper and is unusable – it does nothing for most of the range, then very abruptly cuts off the high end over a tiny range of the knob. The volume pot is not much better, but a little less obvious. After three days staring at this mess, I decided to return it. My guess is this one was a lemon. Someone else returned it. GC slapped it back in a box and sent it off to me without inspecting it. On the plus side, the GC store staff were very apologetic and accepted the return without a quibble. The guy said this (returns being sent out again) had been happening a lot lately. The stores are not fully restocked from the virus shutdowns, so beware that what you're getting is really new.

This guitar is pretty good. It's a baritone but the scale isn't so crazy long that it is uncomfortable. When the guitar arrives, the action is too low which causes fret buzz. Set the truss rod, set the action, fine tune the intonation and you're in business. Fret buzz goes away. The neck, oh god the neck. The neck on this guitar is a thing of beauty. The frets are beautifully rounded, extremely comfortable. Wood is satin finish so it's not sticky. Fret board looks like ebony but I'm not sure what it's made of. It works great. The neck plays like a dream. The body is good. It's kind of large but feels fine. The red paint that it has looks really good in person. Pickups sound great. No noise. Bridge is easy to adjust. It does have a coil splitter which works as you'd expect. No tremello and it has locking tuners. They're very nice. It's a great guitar. The only down side / maybe upside is the tuners being flipped. A longer low b string might be good, might be bad. It's odd though when tuning. Uncomfortable. It's such a mild thing though that's it's probably not a con.

I wanted to write an honest review on the guitar itself because the guitar currently only has three stars, but one review is more on Guitar Center service than the instrument and the other one star review is just altogether incorrect. On top of that a lot of the specs they have listed here are incorrect. This IS the 28" scale baritone model. So onto the guitar. The build quality seems high. It's a solid guitar and none of the parts feel cheap. Quality is pretty on point for the $500-$700 price range in my opinion. Where I was let down quite a bit was the simple fact that this guitar was not setup in any way. Every string buzzed and half the frets were dead on arrival until I set it up. Not a huge issue as I was switching out the stock strings to a much heavier gauge anyways, but if you're thinking of buying one and don't know how to setup the action on a guitar you'll want to factor the cost of having that done into your purchase. It's a blast to play and sounds great. This is my first baritone and figured at 28" this would be a good starting point.

This guitar was sent to me with a loose output jack, loose knobs, dirty strings and 3 chunks taken out of the body. Definitely returning. Done with guitar center.