gavinasaurus
Member
So I hadn't played much guitar until recently because of school and what not. I've recently started playing again and decided i was tired of 6 string guitars and decided to sell all my 6 strings and replace them with extended range guitars. My first was an agile 8 string with a 27 inch scale and it is what it is nothing amazing but not a bad guitar. i played a fanned fret agile a while back and fell in love so i started looking for a fanned fret 7 or 8 string. i ended up selling my jackson sl1 and my ibanez s series prestige and bought 2 new 7 strings a Halo Octavia 7 and a skervesen shoggie. The Halo arrived today so i thought id let people know what i think. ill do the same for the skervesen when it arrives.
Clearly when looking for a fanned fret your choices are a bit thin unless you order something custom which takes a while. I purchased the skervesen which is an obvious choice, but its also headless and i wanted something a little less expensive that i could also down tune anytime i wanted without much effort. I was planning to go with the ibanez rgif 7 or 8 but played one before hand and could not stand the parallel fret being at the 12th fret. Maybe being at the 12th fret is alright for some people it just wasn't for me. i really didn't want to purchase another agile since i had one already so i kept looking. i stumbled on to this guitar which i must say i was extremely cautious with because i had read about Halo multiple times in the past and saw some horror stories. I looked around and saw that recently people haven't had any problems so i decided to purchase this. I'm going to go into detail on a few areas giving them a rating out of 10.
customer service and quality control: 10
I have to say these guys have some insanely good customer service. They emailed me almost immediately giving me an estimated ship date and updates on the guitar. I got an email saying they found a cosmetic blemish in the paint and they couldn't sell it to me like that without a discount or throwing in a free case. i agreed because it was only cosmetic and hell i love discounts. I actually found this really surprising because after receiving the guitar it's nearly impossible to see without looking for it. I've bought a jackson sl1 brand new that came with a blemish and that's a near 4k guitar. so i have to give it to these guys i sincerely believe they have turned things around and aim to please all of their customers.
build quality: 7.5
This is actually a hard one to put a number on for me. Before my agile my 3 guitars were an esp horizon fr II(which i'm selling), a Jackson sl1, and an ibanez s series prestige(i don't remember the exact model but i believe it was a s1520. somewhat older). so my point is the 3 guitars i had before my agile were all pretty expensive and supposed to be the highest of quality. if we were going strictly by price to quality ratio i'd give this guitar a 10, but i'm going by overall quality and considering some extremely high end guitars here. ill say quality wise this guitar is up there with my esp which id say was the best quality I've owned. so that should say a lot considering i would rate it higher than a jackson cost close to 4k while this guitar was only 1200. i believe this is a guitar that will really last and could probably handle pretty good touring. The materials they used are pretty high quality especially the fretboard. The ebony frets on this guitar are far nicer than any other guitar I've owned. the hardware seems to be really nice. The single saddle bridge system is really nice so far so future will tell.
sound and playability: 7 and 8
This guitar plays really well. Its got a pretty nice neck. Not really thing but by no means thick. The action is low and the fretboard radius is pretty comfortable. not to flat but not to round. The scale lengh is 27' to 25.5' with the parallel fret being at the 9th. i think the inch and a half fan is perfect and feels really natural while keeping the tension of the strings perfect for each string. i would have gave sound an 8 also except the pickups. They used seymour duncans in this model i cant remember exactly which ones. I've never been a big fan of duncans. I had them in my jackson and also in my agile. I plan to replace them with bare knuckles which at that point i really feel l like the sound would be much better.
I have to say i was terrified when i first ordered this guitar but i believe it was a good choice now. These guys seem to have really turned things around. Hopefully the skervesen will be here next week and i can give a little rundown on it.
Clearly when looking for a fanned fret your choices are a bit thin unless you order something custom which takes a while. I purchased the skervesen which is an obvious choice, but its also headless and i wanted something a little less expensive that i could also down tune anytime i wanted without much effort. I was planning to go with the ibanez rgif 7 or 8 but played one before hand and could not stand the parallel fret being at the 12th fret. Maybe being at the 12th fret is alright for some people it just wasn't for me. i really didn't want to purchase another agile since i had one already so i kept looking. i stumbled on to this guitar which i must say i was extremely cautious with because i had read about Halo multiple times in the past and saw some horror stories. I looked around and saw that recently people haven't had any problems so i decided to purchase this. I'm going to go into detail on a few areas giving them a rating out of 10.
customer service and quality control: 10
I have to say these guys have some insanely good customer service. They emailed me almost immediately giving me an estimated ship date and updates on the guitar. I got an email saying they found a cosmetic blemish in the paint and they couldn't sell it to me like that without a discount or throwing in a free case. i agreed because it was only cosmetic and hell i love discounts. I actually found this really surprising because after receiving the guitar it's nearly impossible to see without looking for it. I've bought a jackson sl1 brand new that came with a blemish and that's a near 4k guitar. so i have to give it to these guys i sincerely believe they have turned things around and aim to please all of their customers.
build quality: 7.5
This is actually a hard one to put a number on for me. Before my agile my 3 guitars were an esp horizon fr II(which i'm selling), a Jackson sl1, and an ibanez s series prestige(i don't remember the exact model but i believe it was a s1520. somewhat older). so my point is the 3 guitars i had before my agile were all pretty expensive and supposed to be the highest of quality. if we were going strictly by price to quality ratio i'd give this guitar a 10, but i'm going by overall quality and considering some extremely high end guitars here. ill say quality wise this guitar is up there with my esp which id say was the best quality I've owned. so that should say a lot considering i would rate it higher than a jackson cost close to 4k while this guitar was only 1200. i believe this is a guitar that will really last and could probably handle pretty good touring. The materials they used are pretty high quality especially the fretboard. The ebony frets on this guitar are far nicer than any other guitar I've owned. the hardware seems to be really nice. The single saddle bridge system is really nice so far so future will tell.
sound and playability: 7 and 8
This guitar plays really well. Its got a pretty nice neck. Not really thing but by no means thick. The action is low and the fretboard radius is pretty comfortable. not to flat but not to round. The scale lengh is 27' to 25.5' with the parallel fret being at the 9th. i think the inch and a half fan is perfect and feels really natural while keeping the tension of the strings perfect for each string. i would have gave sound an 8 also except the pickups. They used seymour duncans in this model i cant remember exactly which ones. I've never been a big fan of duncans. I had them in my jackson and also in my agile. I plan to replace them with bare knuckles which at that point i really feel l like the sound would be much better.
I have to say i was terrified when i first ordered this guitar but i believe it was a good choice now. These guys seem to have really turned things around. Hopefully the skervesen will be here next week and i can give a little rundown on it.
