NGD Rusti Guitars Lotus #1 headless

[nickgray]

Any routing lower than that isn't needed.

In OP's pic there's like 2-3mm of room at most between the baseplate and the route. You're not doing any whammy tricks with this, you'll maybe coax a semitone out of it if we're being really generous. I highly doubt the OP had the strings flush with the 24th fret either in that picture, that just makes no sense. But even if the did, a few extra mm wouldn't do anything.

There's a reason why virtually every trem that's supposed to go freely both ways is recessed. It's not just supposed to go just a semitone up, or even a tone, you should be able to hit a natural harmonic and go completely bananas.

 

[Matt08642]

Couldn't the neck just be shimmed and the posts raised to compensate? Not taking in to account anything else, just thinking of the trem functionality. As far as I can tell, the trem was never going to be able to pull up more than a tiny bit because of how shallow the route is? Even in the pics from the site:

If it left the shop like this with perfect fretwork and no buzz etc, it would still not pull up very far at all?

Damn I'm dumb as hell, @nickgray post above mine is the exact same thing

 

[Thesius]

Everytime I have opened SSO today there has been a "NGD Rusti Guitars Lotus #1 headless
x 1 minute ago". Y'all wild in this thread.

 

[narad]

Couldn't the neck just be shimmed and the posts raised to compensate? Not taking in to account anything else, just thinking of the trem functionality. As far as I can tell, the trem was never going to be able to pull up more than a tiny bit because of how shallow the route is? Even in the pics from the site:

View attachment 111001

If it left the shop like this with perfect fretwork and no buzz etc, it would still not pull up very far at all?

Damn I'm dumb as hell, @nickgray post above mine is the exact same thing

And same as he's doing now, no?

 

[Matt08642]

And same as he's doing now, no?

View attachment 111002

I wish someone would make a video with one of these guitars demonstrating the pull up range lol.

 

[mbardu]

And same as he's doing now, no?

View attachment 111002

This one at least has a clear dropoff/extra routing to give at least some space under the plate. Unlike OP's guitar.

 

[Dayn]

Well, there went my lunch break.

Putting pretty much everything to the side, including the tiny things, the finish flaws are at least no worse than my two WMI guitars.

 

[nickgray]

Everytime I have opened SSO today there has been a "NGD Rusti Guitars Lotus #1 headless
x 1 minute ago". Y'all wild in this thread.

You should've been here for the black limba pickups

 

[DirtyPuma]

One thing to come out of this thread... found this, daammmn:

Not sure the cavity has changed but he's in the habit of using the sophia on things now.

Remember, my guitar was advertised with the same kind of images and all looked great from afar. All people drooling over the looks on these images, but when up close and personal, the guitar was utter crap for that price tag.

Of course, I can only talk for my one guitar, but it was not just one flaw on it but a myriad of issues which should not be there (check the images at the start of the thread).

Worst thing is Rusti Guitars' reaction from start to finish and how he still believes that my guitar was all right from the start and there was nothing which needed a fix. Now you can imagine how things went back then and why I had to resort to legal push.

But OK, that's what you get for paying that amount of money and waiting so long. Should have started to have my doubts when he started to bring up excuses why the build still not started / was not where one would expect it to be / was nit progressing. So many red flags actually.

And I could even imagine him telling his "customers" (friends) to just come here and try to disprove my review. This is also what happened here before, arguing without disproving the initial post. But nothing in these images and how I described the guitar can be disproven. There is enough evidence against Rusti Guitars and to show that my build was sub-par on several levels.

 

[DirtyPuma]

Couldn't the neck just be shimmed and the posts raised to compensate? Not taking in to account anything else, just thinking of the trem functionality. As far as I can tell, the trem was never going to be able to pull up more than a tiny bit because of how shallow the route is? Even in the pics from the site:

View attachment 111001

If it left the shop like this with perfect fretwork and no buzz etc, it would still not pull up very far at all?

Damn I'm dumb as hell, @nickgray post above mine is the exact same thing

Of course, you could shim the neck and raise the posts to ridiculous height. But this would make playing a pain in my opinion. That's not what you expect at 5 000 € price point and 2 year wait time. And again, all was fine acc. To him and he still says so. Only a setup needed and I should pay the shipping costs. I mean "yeah let's ship a 5 000 € guitar at my cost to a workshop which was not able to build it and which tells me that all on these images / videos / sound clips is fine and then be told that it is just as good as when it left the workshop". Another 300 € into the drain. Maybe even the guitar damaged? (Actually this happened when I send it back, although I send it back the same way it came, but that's another story and has nothing to do with the guitar review.)

Also the crooked trem / not working global tuner wheel / fucked up electronics / all other cosmetic flaws (I would also like to point out the fail in the weight category, kind of bad plannig, I was never made aware that this cannot work out as I told him) would still not be corrected by just shimming the neck.

There is quality service (usually not cheap), there is quick service (usually not cheap), and then there is Rusti service (i.e. taking forever with sub-par results, very expensive).

 

[Gango79]

every time i open this thread I see a reply of the Puma. Mate you definitely stop this stupid crusade. You are not for luthiery. You definitely are a Guitar Center guy…you have to try a guitar, put your hands on it, check if there are any flaws, and only then buy it.

 

[prlgmnr]

Conspiracy theory…now hear me out.

DirtyPuma actually still has the Rusti and wants to sell it on SSO. However, we have a 100 post minimum to post in the classifieds here, so DP made this thread knowing it will cause mass argument, thus driving up his post count so he can sell the guitar in our classifieds!!!

It all makes sense.

This thread really needs the new owner to drop in.

 

[Jonathan20022]

I agree that the minor cosmetic flaws were not the reason why I think this guitar is made in a cheap fashion. It is all things taken together which make this guitar so awful. This is just by no means 5 000 € standard. I even own another custom guitar in that price range and it is FAR superior (a Skervesen, so I recommend them over Rusti Guitars a 1 000 times, but they are also not perfect, but they care if you complain about something and do not brush it off as "your taste").

But people are coming to this thread and performing damage control for Rusti Guitars and blame the customer, although the guitar was shipped in an extremely bad condition for a 5 k instrument. It had nothing to do with the customer up to that point.

This has been a fucking wild read, how does a thread double in length in less than 24 hours DirtyPuma, simple request can you show Rusti brushing off your initial complaints and mocking you, etc.

Like at the end of the day, all the back and forth about quality and standards and what good CS should be and that Rusti didn't provide is just regurgitated white noise.

OP's first posts were informative and insanely detailed, and he has every right to be upset about an imperfect instrument. The reason I asked for context from the conversation was that claims were being made and instead of making conjecture based on claims, I'd rather just see it for myself and inform myself of what actually happened.

1) Guitar was ordered, then finished and demo'd by a third party at the request of Rusti.
2) Delivered with a number of issues (Functional/Cosmetic/Sonic/Structural), all are valid reasons for complaint.
- The cosmetic issues fall lower on the spectrum of severity OBVIOUSLY
- The sound issue is quantified and was tied to a faulty part, the easiest of these to fix
- The other issues are entirely valid and objectionable
3) Rusti apparently mocked OP/Brushed off any sense of responsibility at first contact, I want this established.
4) After some back and forth and legal threats were made, an offer to "setup" (Implied repair) was extended
5) OP Rejected the offer due to costs of shipping, gets the guitar looked at locally instead.
6) Rusti nullifies the guitars warranty (Pickup Replacement, Fret reseating, Setup, Trem Disassembly & Reassembly)
- He offers to resell the instrument after taking the guitar in and addressing all the issues at a loss to OP
7) They go through with this and the transaction ends here.

OP is out his time and 1k+, it's not a hard statement to make that his experience was far from positive and that things could have been handled better. I can also make the statement that OP's rhetoric can make him difficult to deal with, but you could also argue that it never would have escalated to that point with a better initial response.

The complaints about the miniscule stuff doesn't invalidate the more egregious issues, but I would open with the functional/structural issues and hinge on that to get a repair/replacement/return. Not the minimal stuff that under regular tolerances, most customers commissioning HANDMADE goods ultimately will never complain about. Handmade is not production, it will never be you will absolutely find miniscule imperfections if you look for them in handmade goods.

 

[narad]

This thread really needs the new owner to drop in.

Would be nice to hear from him / see a vid of him trying to work the trem.

But one thing I did see is maybe OP's reverb listing for this guitar?

Rusti Guitars Lotus #1 (2021, incl. 2 pairs of pickups) | Reverb

I am selling my nearly brandnew Lotus from Rusti Guitars (finished April/May of 2021).The guitar is in mint condition, pickups and 3-way pickup selector were professionally switched at a guitar tech. Original pickups are included.It is the prototype of his most recent guitar line — a 6-string hea...

reverb.com

If this isn't OP's then I apologize, but are you telling me you start all this fuss, document all these "problems" that obviously to you are serious, and then you write a for sale ad that doesn't mention any of them? Is that the type of person we're dealing with? You call the guitar trash that sounds "dead", has a non-functioning trem, etc., and just pass it off like it's a perfectly working guitar? I mean, you gotta choose at some point.

 

[Jonathan20022]

Would be nice to hear from him / see a vid of him trying to work the trem.

But one thing I did see is maybe OP's reverb listing for this guitar?

Rusti Guitars Lotus #1 (2021, incl. 2 pairs of pickups) | Reverb

I am selling my nearly brandnew Lotus from Rusti Guitars (finished April/May of 2021).The guitar is in mint condition, pickups and 3-way pickup selector were professionally switched at a guitar tech. Original pickups are included.It is the prototype of his most recent guitar line — a 6-string hea...

reverb.com

If this isn't OP's then I apologize, but are you telling me you start all this fuss, document all these "problems" that obviously to you are serious, and then you write a for sale ad that doesn't mention any of them? Is that the type of person we're dealing with?

That is.. not great

 

[Rusti]

6) Rusti nullifies the guitars warranty (Pickup Replacement, Fret reseating, Setup, Trem Disassembly & Reassembly)
- He offers to resell the instrument after taking the guitar in and addressing all the issues at a loss to OP

Nope, as mentioned, i never told him the warranty was nullified. Actually i had to pray him to not sell the guitar in the condition he left it, i paid for the shipment and fixed it, then found him a new owner. He had nothing to lose at that point, so he agreed let me have it back so he would be free of responsibility toward the new customer.

Is that the type of person we're dealing with?

Wouldn't it be funny?

 

[Alessandro Zilio]

Dude where are you going with this? it very quickly turned from a sharing my story to trying in any way possible to publicly roast Rusti guitars. Let me tell you that if you act like this, months after the situation was already sorted out, providing screenshots that only make you like like you're not able to sustain a polite conversation, it just confirms that your acting immature trying to get your tiny personal revenge.
I once had an EBMM Majesty that broke multiple times while brand new which was the shittiest experience i ever had with an instrument, but i never did something like this mate, if people ask me yeah i'll just tell 'em what happened and why i personally will never go back to that, but there are so many happy customers that i don't ever care about doing some shitshow like you did, i'm just happy that was over.
And lastly i think that having a person, the one that made the guitar himself, to refer to directly for your issues is just a privilege, but we all crearly saw how difficult it would be if someone faced a customer with a behaviour like yours.
I really hope you'll move on from this since that's what you were supposed to have done by now since the last 6 months or so when this story was already over.
Bye

 

[DirtyPuma]

Would be nice to hear from him / see a vid of him trying to work the trem.

But one thing I did see is maybe OP's reverb listing for this guitar?

Rusti Guitars Lotus #1 (2021, incl. 2 pairs of pickups) | Reverb

I am selling my nearly brandnew Lotus from Rusti Guitars (finished April/May of 2021).The guitar is in mint condition, pickups and 3-way pickup selector were professionally switched at a guitar tech. Original pickups are included.It is the prototype of his most recent guitar line — a 6-string hea...

reverb.com

If this isn't OP's then I apologize, but are you telling me you start all this fuss, document all these "problems" that obviously to you are serious, and then you write a for sale ad that doesn't mention any of them? Is that the type of person we're dealing with? You call the guitar trash that sounds "dead", has a non-functioning trem, etc., and just pass it off like it's a perfectly working guitar? I mean, you gotta choose at some point.

As mentioned before, since Rusti Guitars did not confirm that any of these were issues and offering no return, not even at 50 % of the price, I was forced to sell the instrument. Acc. to Rusti Guitars "all is fine". He even had the guitar checked in his workshop, read the add more closely. So I have no reason to state the guitar was not good. It is just a "Rusti Guitars" and it seems that is what Rusti Guitars are. They just have issues. This is not out of line, this ist just a Rusti Guitar, as advertised. The condition is indeed "mint", the guitar is as came. So, there is no issue here from a selling point. I wanted Rusti to sell this, because it is a shame to have to sell this crap yourself. But again, Rusti Guitars thinks the guitar is great and 5 000 € worth in price, well then my price was good enough in the end?

Also, I was against selling this, I repeat myself.

Dude where are you going with this? it very quickly turned from a sharing my story to trying in any way possible to publicly roast Rusti guitars. Let me tell you that if you act like this, months after the situation was already sorted out, providing screenshots that only make you like like you're not able to sustain a polite conversation, it just confirms that your acting immature trying to get your tiny personal revenge.
I once had an EBMM Majesty that broke multiple times while brand new which was the shittiest experience i ever had with an instrument, but i never did something like this mate, if people ask me yeah i'll just tell 'em what happened and why i personally will never go back to that, but there are so many happy customers that i don't ever care about doing some shitshow like you did, i'm just happy that was over.
And lastly i think that having a person, the one that made the guitar himself, to refer to directly for your issues is just a privilege, but we all crearly saw how difficult it would be if someone faced a customer with a behaviour like yours.
I really hope you'll move on from this since that's what you were supposed to have done by now since the last 6 months or so when this story was already over.
Bye

Now come on… if you paid 5 000 € for a new custom guitar, then received this thing which was riddled with issues and at the end of the day you are just told by the person who built and sold you that thing that "all this is OK, it is a matter of setup". Who would not be upset? After months of conversations and realizing the situation one is actually in, anyone would be, some might be pissed much, much worse, let me tell you.

And I have every right to write this review. Then the builder once again chimes in and discredits my review, then goes on claiming that the trem is alright, the sound was "a 5-min fix", and the cosmetic issues are not addressed at all (but OK that seems to just be his low standard). Let me remind you all that each guitar is man made. I don't recall any guitar being 100 % built by a machine without any QC. Rusti Guitars is using CNC for the big part of the work and then mostly doing a sanding job. Please don't call this "all by hand", it is not. There are luthiers who actually do all by hand, no power tools whatsoever.

Comparing my experience to your EBMM which came of the shelf is not comparable. For any normal dealer, you just show them the issue and they do their best to help you. They do not start to tell you that this is all as it should be. That it is only setup. Furthermore, they do not charge you the shipment when things are obviously not OK. This is regulated per law.

Nope, as mentioned, i never told him the warranty was nullified. Actually i had to pray him to not sell the guitar in the condition he left it, i paid for the shipment and fixed it, then found him a new owner. He had nothing to lose at that point, so he agreed let me have it back so he would be free of responsibility toward the new customer.

Wouldn't it be funny?

You had to pray that I do not sell it in the condition "I" left it in? Sorry, what a statement… you build that guitar? You messed up the trem? You had some guy (not part of Rusti Guitars) do the electronics job and were not able to check them (do you even play guitar?). Then again, what I did is just remove the pins from the trem / change the strings / change the pups at a professional tech, nothing else? There was never this "warped neck" and massive change in truss rod action you are talking about. You make up stuff and try to brush off the relevant stuff here.

 

[Pietjepieter]

Damn that was a cool read....

Sick guitar, I want a Rusti now

I have a couple of custom guitars, and if I look hard enough they all have imperfections. Makes also sence since even if you pay lets say 5000 euro including taxes it is still bullshit money for something handmade.
I mean lets say 1000 euro for hardware and wood, leaves us with 4000 euro for work (I know less with taxes, but Hey I am lazy) than if we say each hour work is around 40 euro ( salary / tools / rental workshop etc.) then he can spend around 100 hours by building this instrument.... not that much compare to the level of detail of such a instrument....

I completely agree with everyone always should have a working and sick playing / sounding instrument for that kind of money. and for the price it should be well constructed, sick looking etc.
But small imperfections i think to some level you should accept with such detaild instrumets, just the inlays in the neck. I assume it is a lot of work, work time time is money. So a level of imperfection keeps this kind of instruments affordable.

 

[narad]

As mentioned before, since Rusti Guitars did not confirm that any of these were issues and offering no return, not even at 50 % of the price, I was forced to sell the instrument. Acc. to Rusti Guitars "all is fine". He even had the guitar checked in his workshop, read the add more closely. So I have no reason to state the guitar was not good. It is just a "Rusti Guitars" and it seems that is what Rusti Guitars are. They just have issues. This is not out of line, this ist just a Rusti Guitar, as advertised. The condition is indeed "mint", the guitar is as came. So, there is no issue here from a selling point. I wanted Rusti to sell this, because it is a shame to have to sell this crap yourself. But again, Rusti Guitars thinks the guitar is great and 5 000 € worth in price, well then my price was good enough in the end?

Also, I was against selling this, I repeat myself.

If there are issues with a guitar that you are aware of, you disclose them to potential buyers when you sell it. What a terribly dishonest person.