Background: I've been playing for a couple decades, mostly high-gain stuff with Ibanez and Charvel superstrats. Now I'm going through the cliche "aging shred guitarist starts to prefer lower-gain classic stuff" phase. Picked up a Peavey Reactor (tele clone with a USA neck and Taiwan body/hardware) a year or two ago and have been loving that.
I always liked playing strats in guitar stores--super comfortable, easy bends/slides--but the bridge pickup always turned me off. I loved the feel of a gloss maple fretboard, though... Ibanez and Charvel like to use much thinner finishes or even just oil on their maple fretboards, and they get dirty too easily. Always planned to buy a strat sometime in the future.
Wanted a P90 guitar for recording, found out the Noventa existed, ordered one same day. Finally a strat... with a bridge pickup I was excited about... in a great color combination (Daphne blue with black pickups/knobs that contrast nicely with the pickguard).
Arrived today. Looks great, sounds absolutely incredible (bridge pickup is like a much clearer humbucker with a perfect mids/treble/bass balance and works great at a bunch of volume knob levels/gain levels from classic rock to hair metal), stays in tune through heavy bending, clearly going to be an amazing studio tool.
The playability's not what I expected, though. Now, the fretjob is very level--going to have to raise the action if anything. Minimal buzz even how it came, 1.2mm on the high E at the 12th fret. Sides of the fretboard feel smooth and flush (not that that matters as much with my hand position, but people always judge fretwork by that online). Neck shape and the back of the neck feel great...
...but the fretboard finish is much too thin and came pre-scuffed--lots of sanding marks parallel to the frets, not at all glossy like the headstock is. And the frets themselves were sticky and scratchy. Honestly it was a very similar feeling as a "Starcaster by Fender" ultra-budget strat I played once, like a totally unfinished board.
(Amusingly the volume and tone knobs were at totally wrong angles, so when turned up all the way 10 faced away from the player. That was an easy fix though.)
So I took the neck off to give this *new* guitar my standard used guitar fretboard/fret cleaning/polishing scrubdown with a fine scotchbrite pad. Definitely helped, but also made the finish (so it *was* there!) almost bubble a little bit in a bunch of places.
Even after that treatment it's not great. Even had to give the new strings the ol' Yngwie nose oil trick to get anywhere close to acceptable sliding feel, and the frets are very loud when you vibrato unplugged and still feel a little scratchy.
I'm sure bends/vibrato will feel better once I get the right allen wrench to raise the action (heh, not metric for once) to more like 1.8mm, but I'm still a little bummed about not actually checking off the strat feel box. Actually thinking about applying a new fretboard finish or even swapping in a USA neck, but the latter would be a shame given how nice everything but the texture of this one is.
I always liked playing strats in guitar stores--super comfortable, easy bends/slides--but the bridge pickup always turned me off. I loved the feel of a gloss maple fretboard, though... Ibanez and Charvel like to use much thinner finishes or even just oil on their maple fretboards, and they get dirty too easily. Always planned to buy a strat sometime in the future.
Wanted a P90 guitar for recording, found out the Noventa existed, ordered one same day. Finally a strat... with a bridge pickup I was excited about... in a great color combination (Daphne blue with black pickups/knobs that contrast nicely with the pickguard).
Arrived today. Looks great, sounds absolutely incredible (bridge pickup is like a much clearer humbucker with a perfect mids/treble/bass balance and works great at a bunch of volume knob levels/gain levels from classic rock to hair metal), stays in tune through heavy bending, clearly going to be an amazing studio tool.
The playability's not what I expected, though. Now, the fretjob is very level--going to have to raise the action if anything. Minimal buzz even how it came, 1.2mm on the high E at the 12th fret. Sides of the fretboard feel smooth and flush (not that that matters as much with my hand position, but people always judge fretwork by that online). Neck shape and the back of the neck feel great...
...but the fretboard finish is much too thin and came pre-scuffed--lots of sanding marks parallel to the frets, not at all glossy like the headstock is. And the frets themselves were sticky and scratchy. Honestly it was a very similar feeling as a "Starcaster by Fender" ultra-budget strat I played once, like a totally unfinished board.
(Amusingly the volume and tone knobs were at totally wrong angles, so when turned up all the way 10 faced away from the player. That was an easy fix though.)
So I took the neck off to give this *new* guitar my standard used guitar fretboard/fret cleaning/polishing scrubdown with a fine scotchbrite pad. Definitely helped, but also made the finish (so it *was* there!) almost bubble a little bit in a bunch of places.
Even after that treatment it's not great. Even had to give the new strings the ol' Yngwie nose oil trick to get anywhere close to acceptable sliding feel, and the frets are very loud when you vibrato unplugged and still feel a little scratchy.
I'm sure bends/vibrato will feel better once I get the right allen wrench to raise the action (heh, not metric for once) to more like 1.8mm, but I'm still a little bummed about not actually checking off the strat feel box. Actually thinking about applying a new fretboard finish or even swapping in a USA neck, but the latter would be a shame given how nice everything but the texture of this one is.
