Thoughts on GOC Guitars?

[Mathemagician]

Post didn’t deliver yesterday and I wasted an entire day trapped at home waiting. Why the fuck is Saturday even an option if no one is going to fucking deliver my package?

 

[Marv Attaxx]

Grabbed an 8 String Materia in Black, the other day. They had posted on Socials that their site was down and for anyone to purchase via DM.

Seemed to work. AFAIK, they sold out within a day or so.

Got my tracking number. Now I wait.

Im a little worried about my first restring. Would anyone be kind enough to list a quick step by step on how to string and tune the Materia please?

A quick guide about restrining:
1. Change the bridge mounting screws to allen head screws, otherwise the bridge pieces will slide all over the place and go out of tune. You can use the original Strandberg bridge mounting screws which I use myself. This improves intonation and tuning stability a lot.
2. The saddle height screws will stick out a lot, get suitable M2 screws. I've put on 3 mm screws.
3. Restrining: Put the string through the bridge piece and through the headpiece. You can lock the string down at the bridge, but you don't have to since the ball end keeps it in place. While locking the screw into the headpiece you might encounter some problems with the unwound strings: often they don't stay in the middle of the headpiece and slide to the left while locking, which causes tuning and string spacing problems. Try this: put the string in and push it to the right side. Lock the screw as slow as possible to let it grip the string. The string sticking out of the headpiece will start to go upwards, I stop locking at about 45 degress. Now your string should be perfectly sitting in the headpiece.
4. Using large strings: The method above doesn't work for larger strings (bigger than a size 64 I believe) since the barrels are not drilled out to size. You can either do that or: Put on the string backwards, first through the headpiece and put the tapered end into the bridge and lock it down. Lock the other side into the headpiece and cute the string behind it.
5. Leave some slack, as the bridge can pull the string back quite a lot! If you don't leave some slack you won't be able to move the bridge backwards to set the intonation, if necessary.

 

[Marv Attaxx]

scratch strandberg, they don't even sell replacement bridges anymore afaik.

They currently sell one piece on their homepage for 45 bucks, so getting a set might be difficult

 

[Hollowway]

Post didn’t deliver yesterday and I wasted an entire day trapped at home waiting. Why the fuck is Saturday even an option if no one is going to fucking deliver my package?

Same thing happened to me a year ago. I was sitting in plane view of my front door, which is glass. I kept refreshing the FedEx page, and all of a sudden it pops up that I “wasn’t home. Will be delivered next business day.” I was pissed. I called the dispatch center and told them what happened, and apparently the driver filled out the form and took a photo of it in his truck, and wrote down that it stuck it to my front door. I explained that he never came here, and never stuck anything to the front door. Apparently he was running behind and just decided to fuck over a couple of people on the route. Dispatch made him come over to me right then and drop it off. Fuck FedEx and fuck UPS. Constantly screwing stuff up.

 

[ElysianGuitars]

Question to those who own one: is there any way to take the shitty bridge out and replace it with single saddles?

You might be able to replace them with the bridges they're based on, which are Falbo designed.

http://www.apollomusicparts.com/product/single-tune-bridge/

Pricey, but high quality.

 

[Mathemagician]

Same thing happened to me a year ago. I was sitting in plane view of my front door, which is glass. I kept refreshing the FedEx page, and all of a sudden it pops up that I “wasn’t home. Will be delivered next business day.” I was pissed. I called the dispatch center and told them what happened, and apparently the driver filled out the form and took a photo of it in his truck, and wrote down that it stuck it to my front door. I explained that he never came here, and never stuck anything to the front door. Apparently he was running behind and just decided to fuck over a couple of people on the route. Dispatch made him come over to me right then and drop it off. Fuck FedEx and fuck UPS. Constantly screwing stuff up.

Yeah the actual delivery date was a weekday when no one was home so understandably I decided to set it to Saturday. Since no one came I submitted an email complaint at 6pm Saturday as the original confirmation # no longer updates and the “re-delivery #” does nothing.

 

[Hollowway]

Yeah the actual delivery date was a weekday when no one was home so understandably I decided to set it to Saturday. Since no one came I submitted an email complaint at 6pm Saturday as the original confirmation # no longer updates and the “re-delivery #” does nothing.

I know we're getting pretty far OT, and I should probably just make a thread about delivery stuff, but I also had an incident when I sent a christmas gift to my sister. I paid UPS to get it there by a certain date/time, and when it didn't arrive I asked. They said that it was bad weather, and they didn't want their drivers in harm's way. I told the guy that with the internet, I can plainly look up and see that it's been sunny and zero precipitation in the area of the country where my sister lived. The guy said, "No, not necessarily where she is. But there is bad weather in other parts of the country, and that causes the slow down of all deliveries." Which is 100% BS. It got there 3 days after the paid-for date. And they refused a credit for it, because weather is not in their control. In reality, I think it was just busyness of the holiday season, and they were using weather as an excuse for not making their deadlines.

 

[Mathemagician]

I went to pick it up and have had it for a day or so. Didn’t get to play it much as one of the strings “broke”. Feels more like when a string unwinds a bit on a trem equipped guitar. Didn’t actually snap out or anything. Prior to the string snap they seemed to be mostly in tune likely would only have needed some fine tuning with the pegs.

The construction quality feels as good as any indo/Korean guitar off the shelf may feel. The neck isn’t painted so it has a smooth finish. However I can feel some imperfections as I run my hand along the back of the neck. The frets are all rounded but don’t have that “angle” at the ends like a lot of my guitars do. They simply end at an even rounded “bulb”. Difficult to explain but I’ll follow up with the pictures.

At a glance the hardware are looks nice enough. Definitely like the black with gold accents. However I’m going to need to re-read the post further back of swapping the plus sign screws for hex screws.

I don’t even set up my own guitars with TOM/trem bridges so this will be a bit of a learning process for me.

Anyone know what strings gauges come on these by default? Also for the 7 string owners, what are the odds EMG’s will fit in these?

 

[LeviathanKiller]

I'm curious if anyone is able to fit different hardware on here like the Falbo-designed stuff these are similar to. The hardware is the weak point of the guitar imo. I just don't like the tuners really.

 

[Sollipsist]

Anyone know what strings gauges come on these by default? Also for the 7 string owners, what are the odds EMG’s will fit in these?

I don't know for sure, but I'm used to 10s or heavier and the GOC felt pretty slinky to me, so I'd guess a standard .009 top 7-string set. It's a good bet that many people will want something a little heavier.

The pickups have a standard 7-string rout, most dogears should work just fine but idk about bars.

 

[bschmidt]

A quick guide about restrining:
1. Change the bridge mounting screws to allen head screws, otherwise the bridge pieces will slide all over the place and go out of tune. You can use the original Strandberg bridge mounting screws which I use myself. This improves intonation and tuning stability a lot.
2. The saddle height screws will stick out a lot, get suitable M2 screws. I've put on 3 mm screws.
3. Restrining: Put the string through the bridge piece and through the headpiece. You can lock the string down at the bridge, but you don't have to since the ball end keeps it in place. While locking the screw into the headpiece you might encounter some problems with the unwound strings: often they don't stay in the middle of the headpiece and slide to the left while locking, which causes tuning and string spacing problems. Try this: put the string in and push it to the right side. Lock the screw as slow as possible to let it grip the string. The string sticking out of the headpiece will start to go upwards, I stop locking at about 45 degress. Now your string should be perfectly sitting in the headpiece.
4. Using large strings: The method above doesn't work for larger strings (bigger than a size 64 I believe) since the barrels are not drilled out to size. You can either do that or: Put on the string backwards, first through the headpiece and put the tapered end into the bridge and lock it down. Lock the other side into the headpiece and cute the string behind it.
5. Leave some slack, as the bridge can pull the string back quite a lot! If you don't leave some slack you won't be able to move the bridge backwards to set the intonation, if necessary.

Hey Marv Attaxx, any chance you could link me to the hex screws you bought? I followed your lead and bought a set to replace the shitty stripped Phillips screws that were holding the bridge in place, but the bridge barrels sliding is actually worse now that i've put in the hex screws

 

[Marv Attaxx]

Hey Marv Attaxx, any chance you could link me to the hex screws you bought? I followed your lead and bought a set to replace the shitty stripped Phillips screws that were holding the bridge in place, but the bridge barrels sliding is actually worse now that i've put in the hex screws

Ok, that's weird! Did you screw 'em down really hard?
And sure, I've bought these and they work perfectly:
https://strandbergguitars.com/product/tuner-mounting-screw-m3x5-10-pcs/
out of stock atm tho haha

 

[bschmidt]

Ok, that's weird! Did you screw 'em down really hard?
And sure, I've bought these and they work perfectly:
https://strandbergguitars.com/product/tuner-mounting-screw-m3x5-10-pcs/
out of stock atm tho haha

Thank you!

I think the problem is the only screws I was able to find were from china on ebay. they're pretty bad quality -- they started stripping as i tightened them so they're probably not as tight as they need to be. I'll definitely grab the -s* set once they're in stock, hopefully they've stopped gouging on shipping to Canada

 

[ikarus]

Apparently the next Materia run in November will be with upgraded hardware made in Germany...

 

[gunch]

Aw sheeit

 

[sleewell]

wow that website leaves a lot to be desired. i could only click on 2 guitars. didnt see any way to order anything, but i dont think i would based on how shady it looks.

 

[BigViolin]

Exactly, the website isn't just bad it flat out doesn't work.

 

[Sollipsist]

Yeah, I hate to sound old fashioned but companies with an outdated website and social media-only runs seem like a danger sign. GoC seems to be following the Ormsby model...

I'll give them props for a fast full refund anyway.

 

[Hollowway]

I didn’t even know they HAD a website! I know they’re basically just a small presence here in the US, and everything is made in China. My guess is that if you want a decent niche guitar for next to no money you’re probably not going to get someone with a good website.

 

[LeviathanKiller]

I'm teetering back and forth between investing in better hardware for mine or just getting rid of it. Nothing is wrong with it build-wise but 1) I have too many guitars as is and 2) not sure multi-scale and/or headless is really my thing. But dang does it look good.