Zuwei HSH Strat - Is this THE WORST GUITAR I've ever been sent? - Why would a brand even send this? 

Has Zuwei USA deleted all their comments?

All kidding aside, every issue can easily be fixed by throwing the guitar away and buying a different brand. ;-)

This guitar company would rather complain about how long it took to get the guitar reviewed, than to actually address why the quality sucked so bad. Tells you a lot about the company.

The nut slot gap is unforgivable. The nut slot is so fn important for tuning and intonation and that's not a cheap fix. Buying budget guitars comes with low expectations. But you expect the bones to be there. Crappy electronics hardware and finish blemishes are fine at this price. But this instrument was fundamentally built wrong.

It would probably be a good starter guitar... for someone who wants to be a guitar tech.

I found a used Yamaha Pacifica for $49 at a Salvation Army store that is 1000% a much nicer and playably decent guitar than that by miles.

“I don’t want to commit a fresh set of strings to this“ That. Says. It. A L L!!

Given the other issues with it, I wouldn't be surprised to discover the neck isn't actually roasted at all, just dyed darker.

great meeting you last night. and while I'm not a guitar/music guy, I hit the subscribe button...mutual respect!

I feel so sorry for people that start out with a guitar like this. They get so frustrated witht the retuning alone that they quit, thinking all guitars are like this.

I always find it weird when a company puts attention to details like the jack on the back and recessing the covers, but skip the really important things like gluing the nut on straight.

The pure honesty is refreshing. I guess the roughest part for me is that for around the same price you could get something like a low-end Squier or Yamaha that will be leagues better out of the box. Really, if you're in the market for a beginners guitar you should be buying in person if possible, to avoid trash like this.

No, you're not being unfair. It's a $140 project guitar. Needs Quality strings, New nut, New bridge, New tuners and then MAYBE it would tune properly and SOUND properly. You were totally fair. Merry Christmas.

Great job being honest. You are doing what a reviewer should do. This is obviously a piece of junk and at $229 in this day and age they can't even hide behind the decent for such a low price ploy! JUNK.pure and simple.

It’s good to see an honest opinion of a guitar that has some flaws without obnoxiously bashing the product. Great job!!!!

I bought that orange 1 a month ago and I had the same problem with the nut slot being too wide for the nut and I thought it was just mine but I see it's a common manufacturing problem. I shimmed mine to make it work. The tuners needed to be replaced and I had to rework that bridge system to bring it up out of that recessed cavity to be able to get the whole thing to level out properly to make it playable. And I had to change the all the pickups as well. For the price of the guitar here in Canada which cost me $382 it really should have been better. I have a three-part video series on my channel covering it

Thanks for staying honest to us, Ryan. This is the sort of guitars only possible in the age of the Internet - got a catchy feature that passes as premium by those who know little about the subject, a bunch of "smart" design choices that aren't original nor hard to accomplish with off-the-shelf parts and quick CNC design changes and some bright colors that'll make the whole thing look nice on the stock photos. The consumer just puts the money upfront and the hassle to sort out these mishaps afterwards is too much of a PITA for the average consumer. Now, at least, those who make the quickest search about this instrument before purchasing will get an honest view on a dishonest product.

I don't know about anybody else but Ryan is my favorite antidepressant. No matter what kind of a mood I'm in he can always give me a chuckle. No unpleasant side effects either...

I appreciate Squire more now. When a kid gets a Squire, they may learn to play and enjoy guitar.

You've heard of "while my guitar gently weeps", this is "while my guitar laughs like Fran Drescher"

Ryan looks earnestly into the camera and says "The tuners feel *bad*" 😂😂😂

There are decent asthetic design elements to this guitar, but with the poor QC there's no way this guitar is worth more than $75!

In a world where Harley Benton, jet and others make great budget guitars there's really no excuse for stuff like this

Reviews like this absolutely have value. Techs, and literally anyone who touches a guitar learn what to look for. Manufacturers (hopefully) learn what does not work. Pop art people have things to turn into clocks or slap a brewery sticker on it and hang it in a bar. And all your behind-the-scenes information for content creators that you mention is valuable. It’s the beard man, they fear the beard. 🤭

This is something I find incredibly irritating and absolutely annoying in the musical instrument industry today. A company that is selling a guitar under $300, could and should be doing a much better job, and the excuse of material cost is no longer a valid "get of jail card" answer. There are many companies both big and small that produce some truly amazing guitars in the under $300 range. Hell, there are a few make some truly underrated and decent guitars in the under $200 range. What I hate about companies that are pushing out quantity versus quality is how this is absolutely hurting the music industry by giving new players a bad taste of shitty instruments, because new players don't always know whats good or bad, and that is leaving them frustrated and some to the point where they walk away from playing.

I checked out their website. Amazing that even the guitars they picked to show on their website have obvious manufacturing flaws.

I'm pretty certain this guitar is based on Charvel's Pro-Mod DK24 - roasted maple neck, 24 frets, has the input jack in the same place, and even has the recessed strat-style trem bridge.

Ryan I thought you gave this guitar a very fair and honest review as you always do with the humour you always bring to any review you do whether it’s good or bad. I used to be a product buyer for a large UK Electronics distribution company, we exported electronics, musical instruments, gear etc all over the world. We imported 95% of products from the Far-East and branded them under our own product brands. Over the years I have been sent so many samples of instruments especially guitars from the far-east and I usually got sent the set of guitar strings with the guitar as you did, I used to buy a pack of 6 electric guitar strings for about U$0.90 when I bought thousands of packs. I have been sent samples of telecaster and Stratocaster guitars that cost around U$27.00 Believe me they were like playing a guitar with a cheese wire cutter!!! The action was hilarious out of the box, the strings sat probably about 1cm away from the fretboard at the 12th fret!!! They were so unplayable you had know chance of being able to push the strings against the fretboard with your fingers, you would have struggled even standing on the strings with your feet getting them to touch the fretboard, the frets weren’t filed and were as sharp as a knife all up and down the neck, and never stayed in tune!! The were dangerous as fuck to be honest. It was actually unbelievable that these manufacturers could send you a sample so badly manufactured and so incredibly cheap that they actually hoped to get orders from me for thousands of guitars. In my experience I reckon I could have got a far-eastern guitar manufacturer to send a similar guitar that you received for around U$40 And yep they sounded worse than the one you got. Nothing surprises me anymore with how poor quality and how cheap some far-eastern companies think it is acceptable to manufacture and send to customers companies. You could have totally ripped this guitar to shreds in your review but I think you were pretty fair with what you said. There’s no way this guitar is worth U$240!!!!! Or even half that.

I had a weird “sitar” kind of noise on a cheap guitar that I bought new to mess around with, and when I changed the strings to good quality ones the noise went away, almost. I reckon most of it was the wound strings windings being loose around the string core, together with a badly slotted nut that ran parallel to the string, i.e. no proper breakover to the tuners. Basically I wasted my money, lesson learned.

FYI, that design/placement of the pickup magnet is typical of a Filtertron. That said, the size of the bobbins doesn't match what a filtertron should be (they should be taller and skinnier), so I think the combination of bad pickup wire choice and that design just produces a crappy sound. Also: Roasted maple necks are pretty much just stuck in an oven to roast them.

Man there are some really great guitars out there for 200 bucks these days. Some damn decent for 100. They are out of their mind for 240

Actually, I am glad Zuwei sent you this as it was, because Regular Joe/Jane guitar buyer would most likely get what you got: a guitarish object, kind of pretty and shiny, but not very good for actually playing. I have owned about 25 guitars in my lengthy life, some rather expensive and some comically cheap, so I am no snob. Better stuff is available at this price point. The other problem, of course: if you are relatively new to playing, getting something like this will frustrate you( "Why can't I tune this?" )....you won't know how to improve it, and may well just throw up your hands and guit guitar altogether. I stopped playing guitar 3 times when I was a kid, and only stuck with it or 45+ years after the 4th guitar I bought was actually playable. PS: you new players: find a friend who actually plays guitar and have that person help you find a playable used guitar: as common as grains of sand, particularly in the used market. If you find a player, buy it...you'll be glad and can proceed with the lifelong battle to get better while having a blast while doing so. Thanks, Mr. Hum.

For the asking price on amazon ($206-233) I can pick up a Harley Benton Fusion III for $285, CST-24 (PRS 22/24 knock off) for $184-217 or a fender strat copy from $139-180. So i got a lot of choices in terms of finishes, colours and body styles that i can choose and spend my money on and each guitar has its own price range. To say that i am spoilt for choice is an absolute understatement. Maybe some cheap HB guitars might have some QC issues because they are bottom barrel cheap but a lot of their guitars polish up really well after a little fret dressing and setting up. You really get a lot of guitar for your money with HB and they are so well built that even the budget guitars i mentioned provide a great platform to be upgraded and modified to play and sound like a $1000 guitar on the cheap.

I've had issues with Zuwei and Starshine guitars too. They are not all this bad - it's the usual case of not having any quality control. They look good - some nice veneers and finishes - but I've come across some of the same issues you mention in this video PLUS neck/fret issues. To be fair, I've also set up a couple that were really decent - but not quite good enough to keep. Some of your issues are normal (cheap tuners and hardware, poor nut slots, buzzing, bad action, etc.) but there is no real excuse for a wrongly routed nut channel - that is particularly bad.

I appreciate you being honest about it. I can see how it wouldn't be fun for you to be in that position but I'm glad you are willing to tell it how it is.

Ryan, as usual, I really appreciate your reviews. Thank you so much. I was considering one of these as a telecaster with a humbucker humbucker and an imitation bigsby, scratch that one now off my list

It looks really cool, but yeah I would be doing A LOT of changes with it. Starting with locking tuners and different/better trem block

The headstock says “custom shop”. Man I don’t want to see what their regular line of guitars is like.

New subscriber. This video randomly showed up on my feed and I really enjoyed it. Hoping this video does great things for you! Can't wait to peruse through your videos!

Which guitar was worse, this one that you reviewed or the Epiphone Les Paul SL (Melody Maker) that you did all of the mods to a few years ago and then destroyed it afterwards? I was actually kind of partial to that on...

When I lived in Brazil I visited a guitar " factory " that made stuff like that. It was a large garage full of old wood working machines. In one corner would be someone hammering in frets in the other someone spraying on a finish. That guitar looks like it is meant to meet a price point in the local market. Amazon has allowed companies like that to reach the world. In the country where they were built they can compete but not here . Good review . In a moment of weakness I bought a guitar like that off ebay for $70 . I cleaned up the frets and realized it was a lost cause and it took me forever to sell.

26:29 From what you're saying in this video I wouldn't even spend $150 on it. I bought an Ibanez Gio series for $150 to keep as an extra practice guitar at my work office. The frets were a little rough, but that was my only complaint for the price. It was definitely a worthy entry-level guitar.

Thanks for an honest and fair review. Everyone else has said everything I would have said. I hope they seriously look at their product and do some improvements. Would hate to have a kid get one of these guitars and decide to not play because it's a bad guitar. :-(

Your honesty is always refreshing. It’s why I subscribed to your channel. Thanks again for what you do!

The silicon packs are actually safe to eat because they are made out of sand. The reason why they say do not eat isn't because it's poisonous, it's because it's a choking hazard.

You did that well, good job. I had an issue with another YT guy trashing a Glarry because he clearly had a beef with the treatment he perceived he had had from the company and was using his YT _power_ to hit at them, he made that very clear (even though the guitar actually was poor). Not everyone who criticizes a reviewer is "trolling".

Just wanted to point out something that caught me out while you were demoing the guitar: It seems like you were resting your hand on the bridge while playing which, as it's floating, kept wavering the notes in and out of tune. Obviously the intonation will be janky anyway due to the jaunty nut angle, but I couldn't work out why the pitch was veering mid-note until I noticed. It was 22:20 when you took off your hand to tap that the penny finally dropped! Does the trem have a particularly light action?

interesting review. The output jack placement by the brand was a great idea. Would love to see this compared to a Squier or similar guitar. You can get a used Squier for a good price and it would probably sound better

What’s sad is that an unknowing parent will end up buying one of these over something like a $110 Glarry, or Rondo SX thinking they are getting twice the guitar…when in reality, the glarry or Rondo is twice the guitar this one is, at half the price.

The competition for budget guitars is so tight these days, you really have to step it up. The consumer won't accept shoddy quality on a sub £200 guitar, because they don't have to now. It's refreshing to hear honest views on a product as well, as many buying this may be new to the guitar world and might accept this as the benchmark or baseline for what a guitar should be.

Great video. must have been a rough one because I've seen you review a lot of budget gear that rocks.

I can see one issue straight away when you held it sideways the neck break angle is towards the bridge rather than away so it looks like the strings are pulling on it causing a v to form on the profile that is reeaaly bad considering you can get a Jackson JS for that price

I don’t think you’re being unfair. The pickup looked almost Jimmy-rigged. The exposures were garish. The playability was compromised by shoddy workmanship. You’ve given a fair shake to lots of budget guitars. Really all of them. No, you did great. It’s going to be a challenge for Zuwei (SP?) to bounce back and show any potential. But that really is kind of your job to show them that also. If your review is in any way a contributing factor to hard times at that company, it’s not on you. The onus is on them. You did great.

Ryan is dangerously close to being Yukon Cornelius’ doppelgänger. Which I guess is only fitting given the time of year.

Never give up. I get real mileage out of your reviews. I use your commentary style to deal with juniors at work. You are my reservoir of satire😁

Surfboard resin actually makes a pretty good guitar finish. That u/v cured solarez stuff works pretty good, although its tricky to work with.

That was painful to listen to. I get trying to make affordable guitars, but it's getting a bit disrespectful to the real manufacturers and musicians who care. Your review is definitely commendable and honest.

The roast on the neck was applied by brush.

IS THAT REAR TREMOLO ROUTE VISIBLY CROOKED, or just camera angle? what is that sticking out in there under the springs? is that the pickup poking thru?

Besides the fact that I don't need another guitar, I like this guitar, some of the features were cool. But after seeing his review, i would replace the tuners, the bridge and the pickups and probably fix the nut issue, but overall, i liked it. I appreciate his honesty with the review, because if i wanted to, i could buy one knowing full well what i should expect to upgrade. I would rather know, than be blindsided and just get mad about it.

I think the nut has a good bit to do with tuning stability. The problem is it has to many cheap parts I'd rather pay $325.00 for the guitar with better pickups, better fit and finish, and a better bridge.

The review was fair, and he pointed out problems by close up pics and sound. It's a cheap guitar, and like most of them the can be tweaked and upgraded.

Hey Ryan, Zuwei has a floyd rose telecaster is it possible you could share some opinion on that or even possibly maybe review it? There is one other video in youtube of a guy that reviewed it, but it isnt a very good one. Anyway, thanks for the content sir!

I bought my very first guitar that I’ve paid under £140 for a few weeks ago. I got a Kramer Beretta special for £135. The stock pickups were acceptable, but I primarily bought the guitar as a modding platform, but I have to say, for a £135 guitar, it played surprisingly well straight out of the box. It’s now fully modded and my go to guitar…….I actually pick it up a lot more than my Charvels, Fender USA strats and my trusty scalloped fret Washburn N4 (I had the frets professional scalloped on that).

When tuning any floating bridge, instead of tuning 654321 (low to high) tune 612534. This helps keep the tension even across the fretboard instead swiping it across it. Think of smoothing out a sheet on the bed from the middle out instead of from one side to the other.

After you showed the nut slot had a huge gap in it and the groove wasn't even straight, I decided that it isn't a real musical instrument. It's a toy.

No one likes to be the bearer of bad news. Thanks for being honest with us viewers. Merry Christmas! (and keep up your great work)

I picked up one of these in Orange for 170 on Amazon. After changing PUPs, bridge, tuners, and performing a setup on it, plays great now. Not my favorite cheap brand of guitar that's for sure but not horrible either. Barely above Glarry in my list of cheap guitars. Not for beginners in my opinion as this also had a lifted fret I had to glue back down.

Eart was like "lets make $300 guitars that play like $500 guitars!" This company was like "lets make $100 guitars that LOOK like $500 guitars!" smh.. Great vid ryan

I didn’t see anything “fatal” in the guitar, that is to say I think the issues can be corrected but even at that cheap price point a guitar should not have those issues just poor fit and finish and poor quality control. I really don’t get how that nut passed anyone’s inspection. What bothers me most is they pop these things on Amazon knowing full well that the look and price is going to lure new and young players who will buy it and then go to their lessons and become super frustrated trying to learn on it.

Loved the video, thank you for the valuable insights!

is it any better at all if you put quality strings on it?

Oh, man! I stay away for a month, and I find Grizzly Adams has taken over your channel! Epic beard, Chris. You look like a Viking.

Jimi Hendrix needed guitars like this whenever he felt like destroying one...instead of a Fender Stratocaster.

Could the sitar sound be down to cheap strings? Can't get over the bare wire and gap at the nut!

Good review. I love the honest review, and honest comments. And I've read most of the comments below. I totally get what you are saying, and what everyone else is saying. And it is a shame that Zuwei decides to send junk like this out. A shame for them, and that's not a good business model for sure! Now... all that said, I also get another side of this. $230 bucks is still a budget axe. Still as cheap as almost anything out there not named Monoprice, IYV, Grote, and a few others. A Squier Bullet is $200 bucks now - more with certain Special Edition models. The bullets are pretty solid guitars. But with all this in mind.... you get a $230 axe, and if you're like Mike (or me).... sometimes it's worth it, so long as you get something you can work with. Ie... The neck and body. LOL It's all about the neck. And the body. If those 2 things are screwed up, then there's nothing you can do - but to replace the neck all together (I did that with an IYV). But you can tear out all the hardware if you like doing that type of stuff... and you can get pretty cheap hardware. And you can spread the cost out. Like Mike said.... you don't see a lot of orange guitars out there. And some of us love doing these mod jobs, and having cool mod platforms like this one. So..... it all depends on your situation.

The Jack Plate is the dead giveaway that makes this guitar a Charvel copy. The placement of the Jack Plate is genius in my opinion. Not everybody likes it, but I think it's brilliant. Too bad that's the only good part of this guitar so far. LOL.

That resonating could be sympathetic vibrations of the tensioning springs. Dampening those strings with small blocks of foam or felt could be a possible solution.

I don’t really collect guitars , I have my Martin , strat , and Les Paul …but I’m glad I got to see this review. I’ll stay away from Amazon BS pedals / amps/ or instruments that I’ve never heard of…like Zuwei. Buy quality ! It only hurts once!

for the same amount of money i bought my first guitar, a ibanez gio. including a AMP, Tuner, gig bag, picks. and it was a amazing guitar for the price

Ryan I noticed you tune low string to high string. On full floating trems just for initial tuning tuning from outside in tends to lend some stability just getting tension. (Low E, High E, Low A, High B, D, G) I learned this doing Floyd setups from a tech friend and something about how the tension is distributed makes it easier. Obviously this guitar had a lot of setup issues. Probably literally a stock nut slapped into place

In my experience the sitar sound I had came from not enough downward angle on the strings and the nut slots not being correctly done, the sound was further amplified by the tension springs for the bridge.

I updated some info on a comment I left about the Firefly review you did. If this company is like them, run! I eventually got a refund for a defective guitar... but not the shipping. Shipping to me was $27... and return was $66 via FedEx ground. If you buy a cheap guitar plan on it being a keeper no matter how bad it may be.

Good video. Like you said there are some cool things about this but a lot is left to be desired. To me this screams make over city! Get some decent locking tuners, a new professional bone but and then but the bridge and pickups. I will say for a Super Strat guitar I like the white on orange vibe. It does look clean. GFS pickups would be cool here, perhaps a set of Surf 90s and a Brighton Rock and a set of Tele knobs. Also make sure to replace the pots and electronics. Looks good but the devils in the details and those devils has their day.

I guess there’s one positive. I was looking at buying one of those electric sitars but they’re pricey these days but this heap of crap sounds like it’ll do the job

I wonder if you took off the wrapping on that humbucker that you might find a second magnet sandwiched between the bobbins and the baseplate where one normally would be in a humbucker. If so, then those pickup chassis actually would have some cool possibilities for modding - you could put in pairs of different magnets, trying different combinations of ceramic, Alnico 2,3,4,5 etc.

Thank you for being honest, even when being honest is hard! Off topic, but is that a MKIII Tonebender behind you?

It looks nice but it needs to be priced $100 less so you can gut it and put better parts in it to use as a project or back up guitar!!

More commonly known as a "guitar shaped object" 🤣🤣🤣 Even the "First Act" guitars I buy at Goodwill (and then strip for the parts) for $15 - $25 are better!

I played my first decade of electric guitar on a terrible "Rockster" guitar that seemed to have a MDF body and no concept of playability, and I still notice this guitar being audibly bad. It's a shame because if they made a decent job it could have been a great starter guitar. Fix the QA issues and throw a split switch in there and I could have been interested since my instruments are currently in storage abroad.

Carnival prize,absolute savage review I love it 🤣🤣🤣 you should play to backing tracks on your demos man

Next video: “Can I save this guitar for under $100?”

I'd say don't feel bad about it - it's fair, and you did say the neck was a decent feel (for a start) - and I like the "trying something different with the jack." (Honestly, I wish more strat styles recessed the trem cover, too.) So it's not 100% trashed... just some interesting ideas on an otherwise poorly executed or QC'd guitar.

What do you think of that gin? I grabbed a bottle a few months back. I thought it was fun

The worst electric guitar I ever had was a Jay Turser. It sure looked like a beautiful sunburst Les Paul, but the strings buzzed like crazy above the 12th fret, and the tuning system was cheap. So don't make the mistake of spontaneously buying a guitar because it looks amazing like I did.

That thing is weird, is it not? I mean, how often to you look at an non-modded guitar and scratch your head wondering what they were thinking? Zuwei has got to be some guy in a basement ordering hodgepodge guitar kits and putting them together to sell assembled. Nobody actually working in QC would look at that nut and think, “yeah, that’s good.”

Seems over priced. I could see it for $125 or maybe. It’s in the squire price range and it shouldn’t be. The only thing I can think is they are charging a premium for the roasted maple and the weird Jack.

Man you had no idea what you were getting into when you said "Zuwei, defend yourself in the comments" and "leave me rude and nasty comments" 😄 I know most of them are deleted now, but I was giving this a rewatch and it's funnier knowing what happened after I was last here!

This video and the honesty shown has a new subscriber now. As for the guitar..if it looks like shite, if it smells like shite then it's shite, never back of from telling it as it is..respect.

I really appreciate how much it pained you to be tough, but seriously...those are possibly the worst sounding pick ups I've ever heard! I have sub-200 dollar guitars that blow that away in almost every way. Though i do like the output jack location, other than that, it's firewood.