EdwardMarlowe Posted May 24, 2023 Share Posted May 24, 2023 After months of holding out in hope Thomann would come round and do their MR Classic Mosritealike in a solid colour, I happened to notice today they've dropped the price on the existing model to £165. Today being payday, I jumped on paypal in three and.... I'm having it delivered to the office til I can convincingly say "bigger boys made me do it"... Off on a work trip Friday, so I won't see it til earliest 5 June, but excited. All the MR Classics are markedly cheaper than they were; I hope this is them making way for new stock rather than cancelling the model. Still hoping they do a white one patterned after the Johnny Ramone Ventures II... and the blue and red ones lefty.... at this price, if I get on well with the first, I would buy one of each of those. 3 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Crusoe Posted May 25, 2023 Share Posted May 25, 2023 Nice one. We will expect to see pictures. 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ezbass Posted May 25, 2023 Share Posted May 25, 2023 4 hours ago, Crusoe said: Nice one. We will expect to see pictures. Very much this ^^^ 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
EdwardMarlowe Posted May 28, 2023 Author Share Posted May 28, 2023 There will be pictures! All being well, it will arrive at my office on Tuesday; I'll see it the week after at some point. No amp there yet so it might be a bit before plug in.... unless I can turn up my old Squier 10w SS amp, and I'll take that in to stay there.... After that, the project will be to clear out my spare-room office properly, and sell enough of the current collection that I can take this one home without trouble. The sticking point remains my old Epiphone Les Paul.... I'm over Les Pauls, but this one is just a bit too nice to see for what it would go for. Id the 1998 era MIK LP Standards (with "collectable" original Epiphone headstock! ) ever start selling for enough to buy a Player Strat or Gretsch 5420, though.... 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
EdwardMarlowe Posted June 7, 2023 Author Share Posted June 7, 2023 So it's here! Made a trip into the office this morning. I took some unboxing photos, like the kids on Youtube: Big Box. Tag on the inner box carries the all-important LH designation. I had a nightmare the day after ordering that they'd send me a right hander by mistake... Inner Box, opened: Note they included a hex key for truss adjusments (one assumes) - a nice touch. And here we are.... a real beauty! I know I was put off for a long time by the burst being the only colour option for a left hander. In person, though, it really is lovely. I think - if all finishes were available - I'd put this in order of preference ahead of the black, probably just about equal with the white (unless they did the white in proper Johnny Ramone spec....), and behind the red and blue. So that's a pleasant surprise. Quality of fit and finish is high - shockingly so for £156, and no shipping charge. The guitar has a nice heft to it. Not 70s LP heavy, but enough to feel solid, not something you have to baby. The finish is a little 'plasticky', which to my mind is very much in keeping with the style of the original Mosrites. Too high end a classic nitro finish, for example, wouldn't feel right somehow. Hardware is nice. The machineheads seem good, nice and firm but not sticky. Pots feel good, smooth but again not "loose" or rattly like they can be on some cheap guitars. Very positive, classy feeling switch. Tuned up easily (it was only a step or so out of tune to begin with, and all strings were in tune with each other relatively speaking, which seems positive. The bridge (which I know is a commonly replaced part on the hobbyist market) is the one bit of the hardware that feels/looks a little cheap, but I'm going to leave it on there for now and let the guitar bed in a bit in a bid to let it develop its own mojo and avoid rushing to replace bits because receive wisdom says they need replaced. Once tuned up, I gave it the go-over with a few bars of purple haze and - of course - Blitzkrieg Bop and Suzy is a Headbanger. This guitar LIVES for those big, e-shape barchords. (Root sixths? Root fifths? I've lost my theory...). Acoustically, it sounds good, and I think will bed in nicely. There was a bit of rattle at first - but then I took the plastic off the neck pickup, and that disappeared. I'll have to get an amp into the office and plug it up in coming weeks, but so far signs are all good. This is the first Harley Benton I've actually handled. I've been wary of getting caught up in the hype - across a lot of hobbies and interests over the years I've seen affordable / budget stuff get hyped up only to disappoint. This is of course only one guitar, but if it is indeed typical of HBs output, then I'm ridiculously impressed. Subject to the caveat I've not yet plugged it in, like for like I'd say overall this is on a par with the very best Squiers I've ever played - and a good one of those is great. Discount the cheaper-feeling body finish (which, as I've noted, I see as part of this style of guitar's vibe anyhow, so not in any way a negative). The really big surprise - pleasantly so - is the quality of the neck. Beautifully finished, feels lovely in the hand, not a single sharp fret that I've detected. That was my real worry there. I once bought a £90 Stratalike on eBay (mainly to get a feel for a certain neck profile and style - I sold the bits on a year or two later for more than the guitar cost me, funny old market...) that had so many sharp frets, playing that neck was like playing a hacksaw blade... The closest of all the guitars I have or have owned to how nicely finished this one is is my old American Standard Fender Stratocaster, which I paid £539 for in 1994.... According to the online inflation calculator, the USD50 that Johnny Ramone spent on his first, used Mosrite in 1974 would now be about USD300, or £240 in today's money, and this really is quite the bargain. I could at this sort of price be very persuaded to pick up a second one if HB expanded the colour range in their lefties, though actually what I'd rather they do is, using this as a base, create a Johnny Ramone model based on his customised Ventures II. I've for a long time also been looking at the HB DC Junior in dirty mustard. I see the lefty of the Fat version in red is gone now, replaced by a dirty mustard finish. I'm sort of torn between the two: I hear good things about the fat neck, but the pup in that one being a tapped HB is a real negative for me - the whole point of a Junior is the single p90. It's like putting HBs in a Strat... Maybe into the Summer when I've cleared out more space at home and played a bit more there I'll look at the standard version.... My next purchase really should be a new amp (I'm planning to sell my Vox AD120VT as I just don't use more than a tiny fraction of what it does). I'll probably start with the HB tube5.... I think that'll be all the amp I'll need for the foreseeable. TL/DR - really pleased with this guitar, especially at this price. It's got me excited about playing again, which is good as I've really neglected my guitar for quite a while now, with life getting in the way... 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ezbass Posted June 7, 2023 Share Posted June 7, 2023 I really don’t know how HB do it at the money, if it really is nasty sweat shops in the Far East, why is the fret work so good (the overall finish on my recently acquired HB bass is very good)? Thomann really know how to pack an instrument, mine came in a similar 2 box arrangement. Quality score there, congrats. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
EdwardMarlowe Posted June 7, 2023 Author Share Posted June 7, 2023 21 minutes ago, ezbass said: I really don’t know how HB do it at the money, if it really is nasty sweat shops in the Far East, why is the fret work so good (the overall finish on my recently acquired HB bass is very good)? Thomann really know how to pack an instrument, mine came in a similar 2 box arrangement. Quality score there, congrats. I think that's the thing, yes - I honestly cannot believe a hellish sweatshop would be able to produce this quality. I suspect it's a case of Thomann having a big enough market to do economies of scale, they're dealing direct with the factory rather than going through a brand, so fewer links on the chain needing to make a profit..... No physical shop, so none of the overheads of running a traditional retail operation. Likely also they're still in the early years of building a brand, and are in the strategy of making a smaller profit on each guitar, so people come back for more. And if they buy a case or two, and maybe an amp, a few leads and the other bits once drawn in to Thomann..... I wonder too if part of the idea is to get people into the notion of buying a new guitar online. I've always stuck to buying in person when I can, guitars being a thing that can vary, but at this price it was low risk.... 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
EdwardMarlowe Posted June 7, 2023 Author Share Posted June 7, 2023 Definitely makes me consider buying more HBs, though - including the 51-style P-Bass. Wanted oneof those for years but neither Fender nor Squier versions were ever done as lefties... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Crusoe Posted June 7, 2023 Share Posted June 7, 2023 That looks great. I'd forgotten that you are a lefty and it took me a second to work out why the photo didn't look quite right 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
EdwardMarlowe Posted June 7, 2023 Author Share Posted June 7, 2023 40 minutes ago, Crusoe said: That looks great. I'd forgotten that you are a lefty and it took me a second to work out why the photo didn't look quite right Hah! ON some guitars that are particularly rare to see left handed, they look odd to me too at first glance! I think this is the first Mosritealike I can recall seeing that was actually available left handed - apart from Eastwood, I think they did one? 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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