Full Scale Electric Guitar Semi-Hollow Body Guitar Stainless Steel Frets(Red)

Rarely do I review products but I feel compelled to this time. Like a lot of others who have given reviews, I am amazed at the professional quality of this guitar at this price point. I also have been playing guitar for 25 years and my most expensive guitar is a PRS Custom SE 24 (retails around $849 at Guitar Center). I love my PRS but I learned on a guitar that was basically this GROTE guitar. However, the brand I had at the time was ‘Jay Turser’, also a semi-hollow body in a slightly deeper wine red (that guitar played/served me well for about 10 years playing out until it broke beyond repair). BACK THEN (1998?) I paid $350 for that guitar and have been through many guitars since. I always wanted to get that Jay Turser back so I found GROTE and I'm so glad I did. I do have some technical knowledge of how guitars work so I was able to set this guitar up, but I also did such LITTLE adjustment that anyone with a little patience could do it. It came packaged perfectly with no damage whatsoever. The neck was straight as an arrow (which is a great place to begin from to create a slight up-bow but honestly, I didn't bother with a truss rod adjustment!) The straight neck also created a lot of buzz which after tuning up, was (mostly) solved by lifting up the saddle (turning both turning wheels left with strings de-tuned). I stretched the stock strings over and over until I had good tuning stability and MAN! This guitar plays like a dream! No issues with electronics or finish or…anything (okay it's a little neck heavy but what more can you ask for for this price?!) Fantastic tone! It's beautiful! In short, there are more adjustments I can do to make her even better but for now, I'm hooked on this guitar plugged or unplugged! Get it. Buy a case! Take good care of it. You won't regret it.

I’m not sure what got me interested in a 335 style guitar. I think it was a video review of the Sire H7 that originally caught my eye, then sent me down the road of comparing all of the more affordable 335’s out there. I watched a bunch of reviews for the Sire, Ibanez, Firefly’s, and the Grote. I was convinced that anyone of them could be a good purchase, but the Grote was the least expensive, with pretty much all positive reviews. Based on those reviews, what I was expecting was a decently made guitar that was poorly packaged, would need new tuners, immediately need new strings, a fret polish, and set up. All things I’m capable of doing myself, and actually enjoying tinkering with so, for $185, I thought this could be a fun project guitar to mod and work on. What I got was a well packaged guitar, with perfect fit and finish. I looked at every inch of this thing looking for flaws in the binding or clear coat. Once I tuned it up I was surprised that the strings were actually pretty good. The frets were nicely polished with rolled edges, feeling like a high end premium instrument. The tuners aren’t bad, and there’s no need to hurry up and replace them, though I had ordered a replacement set with the guitar, expecting them to need immediate replacement. The set up out of the box was perfect. I checked for buzz at every fret, none. I didn’t measure the neck relief or string height, since they were both to my liking. I Checked the intonation, spot on. Checked the nut the way Phil McNight does, and it was perfect. So now that the build and set up passed, it was time to play. Before I ever plugged it in, once I started playing it, I couldn’t stop. The neck, which some have described as chunky, just felt perfect in my hand. I definitely wouldn’t describe it as chunky myself. A little fuller than a Strat neck, but in no way a negative. For me, the feel of the neck is everything. If it doesn’t feel good, nothing else can compensate for that. Plugged in, it’s just as impressive. I’m the opposite of a tone snob, so I don’t have the vocabulary to describe the nuances of the pick ups, and I don’t have an impressive rig to play through. What I can say is, from clean to dirty and in between, it sounds great to my ears. It was easy to get the iconic jazzy tone, and just as easy to get it to rock. I’m in no way a guitar expert as a player or a tech, but in my 30 years of playing, mostly as a hobbyist with a little gigging experience, I can’t say enough about how impressed I am with this guitar. I’ve played mostly Strat style guitars, Squiers, a MM Sterling, PRS SE Silver Sky, PRS SE 24, to name a few. I even had a cool Chibson Scotty Moore for a while, which gave me my first taste of the shorter scale. This guitar is definitely on par with all of these, and at a fraction of the cost of any of them. Hats off to Grote for being able to offer something this good at such an affordable price point.

Wonderful addition to my Guitar Collection, I own several Expensive Guitars, that I am almost afraid to use. This guitar looks Great, sounds wonderful, and plays like a dream. It has been a joy to play and is worth so much more than it has cost. The set up from the factory is pretty dang close to perfect, just a little tweak, and replacing original strings with my favorite strings...