marcwormjim
Well-Known Member
Got the guitar last week. I wanted to spend a bit of time with it before I gave my thoughts:
(Pardon the rehash of stuff I've posted before)
I went to the 2013 NAMM wanting to see if there was any production guitar comparable in quality to my Vigier Shawn Lane - That guitar is the cat's ass.
Strandberg came up as a name. I found Ola's exhibit, but he had stepped away for the moment. I mentioned to Jim Lewis that some of the guitars around his table had six and eight strings, but he ignored me.
It was love at first sight:
My greasy, ectrodactylytic hands told me it was the best guitar I've come across. It wasn't until the monday after NAMM that I found out why it hadn't been for sale:
*Not pictured is the caption, "Craigslist Hooker Slot Machine: You Lose."
I put the guitar down, and was eager to return when Ola was present, to ask him about buying one. I went to the restroom, looked over at the urinal next to me, and saw Ola himself wiping his penis with an expensive tissue. He seemed alarmed by my smile, and hurriedly exited. I decided it wouldn't help to follow him out and directly back to his booth; so I went back later.
When I returned to his exhibit, I tried a Varberg (which makes me crave Burger Bones). It was a swell racket, but I had to have that TT Boden. I asked Ola how long it would take to get one, and he replied "Three years." "Three years to build?" "No - Three years before I can start on it - The waiting list has gotten really long." I resisted the urge to go "Bork bork!", and left in disappointment.
I've been following the company and their pointlessly stylized punctuation ever since. Ola had mentioned that, if I held out a little while, US production models would be available within a few months - At which point Jim Lewis loudly defecated in his pants. Ola looked like he was in pain, but didn't say anything. Then Jim pretended to slip and fall down so he could look up an old woman's dress.
Well, as you all know, the bad kind of wormhole fiasco happened; and, within a few months, US production of ^%sTrandBerg*# Bodens was suspended - But Ola reassured me that, if I waited just a little while, I would soon have another opportunity. Still, though, it was quite a shame seeing the tragic series of Youtube videos Jim uploaded, documenting his devolution into some kind of perspiring tomato.
Thereafter, the Washburn US custom shop took over production of Ola's designs. Then he made a company called Astral EXR - a mysterious organization that many wondered what was for. Well, Ola cleared the air a few months later, when he explained that it was now defunct.
My devotion to Parker guitars meant I had a connection at the shop - Each new Boden was being made right alongside the Parker Fly. When I asked my source (Whom I'll refer to as "Pen Karker") if there were any planned Strandberg models worth waiting for, he excitedly exclaimed that, what with the Parker guitars selling like hotcakes, an equally bold design sharing the vision for featherweight guitars made robust with spaceage reinforcment was just a little more of what the doctor ordered. Why, with two winning brands being sold at over three thousand dollars per unit out of the same shop, a thousand year-reich was all but guaranteed - All that was needed was a sustainable demand. Also, neither of us could come up with a guitar store in which hotcakes were selling well. Either way, a Boden with a "Holdsworth" note on it was teased amongst a set of factory photos.
Well, a shame as it is, someone at JAM Industries fired an eighteen megaton, nuclear warhead at Buffalo Grove, Illinois. And with that massive fart cloud, it seemed both Parker and Strandberg would be no more.
Then, with the unforeseen abruptness of a middleschool boner, a new star formed in the sky above Mt. Paektu; illuminating the beautiful scenery with an iridescent dawn, and changing winter into spring. This and a fluttering swallow heralded a new golden age beneath a double rainbow: A Korean miracle. Strandberg was in production, again. And I was informed that, if I waited just a little while, I could soon procure one.
Ed Yoon, known for the success of the Rasmus line at Suhr, had joined forces with Ola to bring his musical reindeer antlers to the Republic of Korea. This would allow the instruments to be produced for a fraction of the US costs; affording a significant price gap for musicians around the world who could afford neither the time nor krona to wait for the swedish fad to blow over. Then, that way, the gap could be closed with a six hundred percent-markup.
The "budget" line, designated "OS" to mirror the "So?" response to Strandberg NGD threads, would be made available to musicians ducking child support in 6, 7, and 8 string versions of insurmountably awkward neck joints.
But I faced two problems with this line: Not only was uploading a video of myself performing two handed-tapping arrangements on a Boden not guaranteed to be shared as "news" on ultimate-guitar unless my wife was willing to wear it for the thumbnail but, also, a trem model wasn't offered. I like me some trem.
Well, when I inquired, I received some good news: If I was willing to wait a little while, a trem series would launch in a few months. Boy, was I excited. Then the color I wanted sold out on the first day. Boy, was my scrotum blue.
I was reassured that, if I waited a little while, I could have a blue Boden to match. I was also happy to see that they would be offered with ebony boards and Lace pickups, which I'd intended to replace the Seymour Duncans with. Things were looking up - All I had to do was wait.
Fast-forward to March 2017, and I was getting a little tired of waiting. So when the OS stock was listed at clearance prices to make room for the even more outrageously-priced new line, I had to pounce on the opportunity: Finally, a South Korean guitar only a couple hundred dollars more than it was worth. It wouldn't be nearly as much of a bath as if I pre-ordered a Fusion!
Well, by golly, after a week and being made to pay fifty dollars more for shipping than I ever had with a World Musical Instruments, Korea guitar, I finally had my .strands of turdburger*:
It was a nice box. At first, I was concerned that I'd been mailed a Floyd Rose Agile by mistake, but was still looking forward to the included glass of wine.
The gigbag was less sturdy than some of the other cases I've had included with a $2,000 guitar, but the swedish flag on it really shows you where your krona went.
The grain on mine wasn't what you would consider the impressive kind of diseased, but it was much better than the koa we saw on the short-lived .Diarrheaberg* line.
Also, the pockmarked "figured birdseye" maple the neck and fingerboard were supposed to be made of resembled Lindsay Lohan's shoulders; with just the occasional carcinoma popping out at you. Also note the wonky side-dots.
The action at the nut was high - And not $2,000 Korean-high, like you'd have to be to pay that much. I couldn't get a good angle, but the zero fret would need to be brought down.
Here's another shot of Mr. Olmos.
I looked at the string locks and thought, "Those are installed crooked." Then I decided that it was just the set-screws pulling the strings to the left. Then I looked at the holes in the string-locks, and thought, "Those are installed crooked."
The control cavity was neat and tidy. I tried photographing other angles to show off how roomy it is, thanks to the chambering of the body:
Now we get to the unfunny and unnecessarily-long part of the post: The guitar sucked. My clearance Boden (not listed as b-stock or blemish) had out-of-level frets, and the action had been set a mile-high to hide it. I emailed Ed Yoon about what a bummer it was, and was told that my only options were to return it for a refund minus shipping, or pay the full upcharge to exchange it for a 2017 model. He didn't apologize for his role in sending it out in that shape - He only stated that the action spec should have been 1/16" at the 17th fret.
Reading between the lines, the clearance price is as low as they go. Otherwise, I'd rag on him more for not acknowledging that offering a partial refund toward a leveling is cheaper than return-shipping.
What bothers me is that the guitar ships with a bunch of hyperbolic paperwork about it being a "spaceage" instrument that will make you play better, and includes a 31-point QC checklist signed by Ed. I'm bothered because that kind of thing's only impressive if the guitar doesn't suck.
Like... Rondomusic skimps on the WMI QC for the sake of actually passing the savings along to the consumer - If it's a lemon, exchange it for a replacement. But using the end-buyer as QC for an inflated, luxury-priced instrument, then doubling-down on that special feeling by including a phoned-in QC checklist as window-dressing on the outhouse isn't something I see paying off in the long run: The return-shipping and replacement of the guitar cost Strandberg USA, INC. over $120 - And no business in their right mind is going to eat it, when other customers can absorb the loss. I hope "Try to do it right the first time" becomes the MO, going-forward - Every guitar should live up to the checklist.
Ed replaced the guitar with a 2017 OS. The action was still higher than I've received similarly-priced instruments with - And needed a setup out of the box -, but seems good, so far.
I want to address the trem: The old, needle-bearing trem is kind of crap. You can/could only adjust the action a quarter-millimeter at a time, one string-at-a-time. And you do it by loosening each string until they can be pulled off the screw-head saddle, then you turn the screw-head saddle. But because the string sits in the slot in the head, you can only adjust it in 1/2 turn-increments. Obviously, on a guitar with bad frets, this makes trying to dial in a decent action harder than it already is.
The new, knife-edge trem comes set up with less range than the old one (barely pulls the G up a minor 3rd when the base is level with the body, as opposed to the old bearing model pulling up to a 4th, depending on how you set the string-height).
I had intended to check out the pivot tension-adjustment when I changed the strings or pickups but, like Ola, couldn't get the knife-edges out. Also, the new push-in arm is much thinner than others, and the bushing it seats in has a set-screw at the bottom that determines how far down the bar seats. It comes from the factory tightened all the way. In fact, it was cross-threaded; and I had to use a screw extractor to pull the bastard out. The bushing should be tapped for larger threads, to avoid this in the future. In the meantime, a flathead screw (as opposed to the included hex) would help. With the screw removed completely, the bar sits at what I'd consider a "normal" height.
The frets don't appear to have been leveled or crowned, at all (which only means they were pressed in level-enough to pass QC). They're pretty even, but I have the action raised at least half a millimeter higher than I know I could get away with, had the frets been leveled to tighter tolerances to avoid fret-out. I only nitpick that detail due to the high price-point of these WMI instruments meaning that their setup QC compares unfavorably to similarly-priced US brands. I'm of the opinion that a 20"-radius board - Only ever used as a spec for the sake of low action - should be shipped with a lower achievable action than a 15.75" Ibanez. As it is, both OSes I've received came with offensively-high strings: The first was hiding a QC failure, whereas the second was just laziness (that only a few of the saddle set screws were screwed in reinforces this impression).
The headpiece hardware, again, pulls the strings slightly crooked - But not as bad as on the lemon.
A minor nitpick is the choice of smooth ebony knobs used on the guitars. Why would you make knobs harder to grip? If they could only engrave some kind of crosshatch texture along the middle of the knobs, it could be seen as the luxury appointment off the beaten path that Ola apparently thinks it is. As it is, it fails as the "value-added" feature it's listed as among the rest of the specs.
Finally - And this is the biggest grievance - The guitar arrived with a dead bridge pickup. Jiggling the volume knob made the sound cut in a bit. Typically, this is a sign that a lead or ground wire for the pickup as come unsoldered from the pot and is shorting out. But when I removed the cavity cover, everything was wired as cleanly as on the previous guitar. This filled me with more trepidation, because it made it more likely that one of the screws mounting the pickup to the guitar had been drilled through the pickup's wires. I pulled the JB out of the guitar, and found nothing wrong. I even got signal from the pickup. Putting it back in caused it to cut out again. Somehow, pressing on the mounting-foam glued to the bottom of the pickup causes the signal to cut out. Thankfully, this is a straightforward repair, and keeping the height of the pickup higher than I'd like keeps enough pressure off the foam to avoid this problem. But I'm also concerned by the fact that, unlike the 2016 OS turd I'd had (in which the pickup cavities seemed so shallow as to have the polepieces right up against the strings), the pickups in the 2017 OS can't be adjusted close-enough to get an output even with the PAFs in my Vigier.
Thankfully, I don't intend to keep these pickups in the guitar; and will mount their replacements more effectively. Still: 31-point QC checklist.
Also, purple's not my favorite color:
My returned OS is now listed for $1795 on the site - A hundred more than what I paid.
https://strandbergguitars.com/product/boden-os-6-tremolo/
Don't accept anything less than a firm "Yes; it's been leveled." The return and replacement-shipping has Strandberg USA, INC out $120 for using the customer as QC.
Ed wouldn't give me a partial refund toward leveling the frets (Which would have been a hell of a lot cheaper than the extra shipping for two guitars); so I wouldn't expect much more than what you'd be getting: A hundred dollar-upcharge for Marc's disappointment.
It's still one of the best guitars I've owned; and I still intend to get a 2017 Fusion model a little further on. But my expectations are more realistic, now, and I may end up just watching for another clearance or used listing.
I'll take additional photos of the purple '17 OS upon request.
(Pardon the rehash of stuff I've posted before)
I went to the 2013 NAMM wanting to see if there was any production guitar comparable in quality to my Vigier Shawn Lane - That guitar is the cat's ass.
Strandberg came up as a name. I found Ola's exhibit, but he had stepped away for the moment. I mentioned to Jim Lewis that some of the guitars around his table had six and eight strings, but he ignored me.
It was love at first sight:
My greasy, ectrodactylytic hands told me it was the best guitar I've come across. It wasn't until the monday after NAMM that I found out why it hadn't been for sale:
*Not pictured is the caption, "Craigslist Hooker Slot Machine: You Lose."
I put the guitar down, and was eager to return when Ola was present, to ask him about buying one. I went to the restroom, looked over at the urinal next to me, and saw Ola himself wiping his penis with an expensive tissue. He seemed alarmed by my smile, and hurriedly exited. I decided it wouldn't help to follow him out and directly back to his booth; so I went back later.
When I returned to his exhibit, I tried a Varberg (which makes me crave Burger Bones). It was a swell racket, but I had to have that TT Boden. I asked Ola how long it would take to get one, and he replied "Three years." "Three years to build?" "No - Three years before I can start on it - The waiting list has gotten really long." I resisted the urge to go "Bork bork!", and left in disappointment.
I've been following the company and their pointlessly stylized punctuation ever since. Ola had mentioned that, if I held out a little while, US production models would be available within a few months - At which point Jim Lewis loudly defecated in his pants. Ola looked like he was in pain, but didn't say anything. Then Jim pretended to slip and fall down so he could look up an old woman's dress.
Well, as you all know, the bad kind of wormhole fiasco happened; and, within a few months, US production of ^%sTrandBerg*# Bodens was suspended - But Ola reassured me that, if I waited just a little while, I would soon have another opportunity. Still, though, it was quite a shame seeing the tragic series of Youtube videos Jim uploaded, documenting his devolution into some kind of perspiring tomato.
Thereafter, the Washburn US custom shop took over production of Ola's designs. Then he made a company called Astral EXR - a mysterious organization that many wondered what was for. Well, Ola cleared the air a few months later, when he explained that it was now defunct.
My devotion to Parker guitars meant I had a connection at the shop - Each new Boden was being made right alongside the Parker Fly. When I asked my source (Whom I'll refer to as "Pen Karker") if there were any planned Strandberg models worth waiting for, he excitedly exclaimed that, what with the Parker guitars selling like hotcakes, an equally bold design sharing the vision for featherweight guitars made robust with spaceage reinforcment was just a little more of what the doctor ordered. Why, with two winning brands being sold at over three thousand dollars per unit out of the same shop, a thousand year-reich was all but guaranteed - All that was needed was a sustainable demand. Also, neither of us could come up with a guitar store in which hotcakes were selling well. Either way, a Boden with a "Holdsworth" note on it was teased amongst a set of factory photos.
Well, a shame as it is, someone at JAM Industries fired an eighteen megaton, nuclear warhead at Buffalo Grove, Illinois. And with that massive fart cloud, it seemed both Parker and Strandberg would be no more.
Then, with the unforeseen abruptness of a middleschool boner, a new star formed in the sky above Mt. Paektu; illuminating the beautiful scenery with an iridescent dawn, and changing winter into spring. This and a fluttering swallow heralded a new golden age beneath a double rainbow: A Korean miracle. Strandberg was in production, again. And I was informed that, if I waited just a little while, I could soon procure one.
Ed Yoon, known for the success of the Rasmus line at Suhr, had joined forces with Ola to bring his musical reindeer antlers to the Republic of Korea. This would allow the instruments to be produced for a fraction of the US costs; affording a significant price gap for musicians around the world who could afford neither the time nor krona to wait for the swedish fad to blow over. Then, that way, the gap could be closed with a six hundred percent-markup.
The "budget" line, designated "OS" to mirror the "So?" response to Strandberg NGD threads, would be made available to musicians ducking child support in 6, 7, and 8 string versions of insurmountably awkward neck joints.
But I faced two problems with this line: Not only was uploading a video of myself performing two handed-tapping arrangements on a Boden not guaranteed to be shared as "news" on ultimate-guitar unless my wife was willing to wear it for the thumbnail but, also, a trem model wasn't offered. I like me some trem.
Well, when I inquired, I received some good news: If I was willing to wait a little while, a trem series would launch in a few months. Boy, was I excited. Then the color I wanted sold out on the first day. Boy, was my scrotum blue.
I was reassured that, if I waited a little while, I could have a blue Boden to match. I was also happy to see that they would be offered with ebony boards and Lace pickups, which I'd intended to replace the Seymour Duncans with. Things were looking up - All I had to do was wait.
Fast-forward to March 2017, and I was getting a little tired of waiting. So when the OS stock was listed at clearance prices to make room for the even more outrageously-priced new line, I had to pounce on the opportunity: Finally, a South Korean guitar only a couple hundred dollars more than it was worth. It wouldn't be nearly as much of a bath as if I pre-ordered a Fusion!
Well, by golly, after a week and being made to pay fifty dollars more for shipping than I ever had with a World Musical Instruments, Korea guitar, I finally had my .strands of turdburger*:
It was a nice box. At first, I was concerned that I'd been mailed a Floyd Rose Agile by mistake, but was still looking forward to the included glass of wine.
The gigbag was less sturdy than some of the other cases I've had included with a $2,000 guitar, but the swedish flag on it really shows you where your krona went.
The grain on mine wasn't what you would consider the impressive kind of diseased, but it was much better than the koa we saw on the short-lived .Diarrheaberg* line.
Also, the pockmarked "figured birdseye" maple the neck and fingerboard were supposed to be made of resembled Lindsay Lohan's shoulders; with just the occasional carcinoma popping out at you. Also note the wonky side-dots.
The action at the nut was high - And not $2,000 Korean-high, like you'd have to be to pay that much. I couldn't get a good angle, but the zero fret would need to be brought down.
Here's another shot of Mr. Olmos.
I looked at the string locks and thought, "Those are installed crooked." Then I decided that it was just the set-screws pulling the strings to the left. Then I looked at the holes in the string-locks, and thought, "Those are installed crooked."
The control cavity was neat and tidy. I tried photographing other angles to show off how roomy it is, thanks to the chambering of the body:
Now we get to the unfunny and unnecessarily-long part of the post: The guitar sucked. My clearance Boden (not listed as b-stock or blemish) had out-of-level frets, and the action had been set a mile-high to hide it. I emailed Ed Yoon about what a bummer it was, and was told that my only options were to return it for a refund minus shipping, or pay the full upcharge to exchange it for a 2017 model. He didn't apologize for his role in sending it out in that shape - He only stated that the action spec should have been 1/16" at the 17th fret.
Reading between the lines, the clearance price is as low as they go. Otherwise, I'd rag on him more for not acknowledging that offering a partial refund toward a leveling is cheaper than return-shipping.
What bothers me is that the guitar ships with a bunch of hyperbolic paperwork about it being a "spaceage" instrument that will make you play better, and includes a 31-point QC checklist signed by Ed. I'm bothered because that kind of thing's only impressive if the guitar doesn't suck.
Like... Rondomusic skimps on the WMI QC for the sake of actually passing the savings along to the consumer - If it's a lemon, exchange it for a replacement. But using the end-buyer as QC for an inflated, luxury-priced instrument, then doubling-down on that special feeling by including a phoned-in QC checklist as window-dressing on the outhouse isn't something I see paying off in the long run: The return-shipping and replacement of the guitar cost Strandberg USA, INC. over $120 - And no business in their right mind is going to eat it, when other customers can absorb the loss. I hope "Try to do it right the first time" becomes the MO, going-forward - Every guitar should live up to the checklist.
Ed replaced the guitar with a 2017 OS. The action was still higher than I've received similarly-priced instruments with - And needed a setup out of the box -, but seems good, so far.
I want to address the trem: The old, needle-bearing trem is kind of crap. You can/could only adjust the action a quarter-millimeter at a time, one string-at-a-time. And you do it by loosening each string until they can be pulled off the screw-head saddle, then you turn the screw-head saddle. But because the string sits in the slot in the head, you can only adjust it in 1/2 turn-increments. Obviously, on a guitar with bad frets, this makes trying to dial in a decent action harder than it already is.
The new, knife-edge trem comes set up with less range than the old one (barely pulls the G up a minor 3rd when the base is level with the body, as opposed to the old bearing model pulling up to a 4th, depending on how you set the string-height).
I had intended to check out the pivot tension-adjustment when I changed the strings or pickups but, like Ola, couldn't get the knife-edges out. Also, the new push-in arm is much thinner than others, and the bushing it seats in has a set-screw at the bottom that determines how far down the bar seats. It comes from the factory tightened all the way. In fact, it was cross-threaded; and I had to use a screw extractor to pull the bastard out. The bushing should be tapped for larger threads, to avoid this in the future. In the meantime, a flathead screw (as opposed to the included hex) would help. With the screw removed completely, the bar sits at what I'd consider a "normal" height.
The frets don't appear to have been leveled or crowned, at all (which only means they were pressed in level-enough to pass QC). They're pretty even, but I have the action raised at least half a millimeter higher than I know I could get away with, had the frets been leveled to tighter tolerances to avoid fret-out. I only nitpick that detail due to the high price-point of these WMI instruments meaning that their setup QC compares unfavorably to similarly-priced US brands. I'm of the opinion that a 20"-radius board - Only ever used as a spec for the sake of low action - should be shipped with a lower achievable action than a 15.75" Ibanez. As it is, both OSes I've received came with offensively-high strings: The first was hiding a QC failure, whereas the second was just laziness (that only a few of the saddle set screws were screwed in reinforces this impression).
The headpiece hardware, again, pulls the strings slightly crooked - But not as bad as on the lemon.
A minor nitpick is the choice of smooth ebony knobs used on the guitars. Why would you make knobs harder to grip? If they could only engrave some kind of crosshatch texture along the middle of the knobs, it could be seen as the luxury appointment off the beaten path that Ola apparently thinks it is. As it is, it fails as the "value-added" feature it's listed as among the rest of the specs.
Finally - And this is the biggest grievance - The guitar arrived with a dead bridge pickup. Jiggling the volume knob made the sound cut in a bit. Typically, this is a sign that a lead or ground wire for the pickup as come unsoldered from the pot and is shorting out. But when I removed the cavity cover, everything was wired as cleanly as on the previous guitar. This filled me with more trepidation, because it made it more likely that one of the screws mounting the pickup to the guitar had been drilled through the pickup's wires. I pulled the JB out of the guitar, and found nothing wrong. I even got signal from the pickup. Putting it back in caused it to cut out again. Somehow, pressing on the mounting-foam glued to the bottom of the pickup causes the signal to cut out. Thankfully, this is a straightforward repair, and keeping the height of the pickup higher than I'd like keeps enough pressure off the foam to avoid this problem. But I'm also concerned by the fact that, unlike the 2016 OS turd I'd had (in which the pickup cavities seemed so shallow as to have the polepieces right up against the strings), the pickups in the 2017 OS can't be adjusted close-enough to get an output even with the PAFs in my Vigier.
Thankfully, I don't intend to keep these pickups in the guitar; and will mount their replacements more effectively. Still: 31-point QC checklist.
Also, purple's not my favorite color:
My returned OS is now listed for $1795 on the site - A hundred more than what I paid.
https://strandbergguitars.com/product/boden-os-6-tremolo/
Don't accept anything less than a firm "Yes; it's been leveled." The return and replacement-shipping has Strandberg USA, INC out $120 for using the customer as QC.
Ed wouldn't give me a partial refund toward leveling the frets (Which would have been a hell of a lot cheaper than the extra shipping for two guitars); so I wouldn't expect much more than what you'd be getting: A hundred dollar-upcharge for Marc's disappointment.
It's still one of the best guitars I've owned; and I still intend to get a 2017 Fusion model a little further on. But my expectations are more realistic, now, and I may end up just watching for another clearance or used listing.
I'll take additional photos of the purple '17 OS upon request.
