Why I Hated The Eastwood GP

I'd read a lot of good reviews for Eastwood Guitars so I decided to take a punt on one that I didn't see very often – the GP; based on the relatively rare Ovation Ultra GP. It was £200 on eBay UK and it fit my criteria of being an alternative guitar, or a leftfield choice to something like an Epiphone so I thought it'd be a risk-free purchase.

Let's find some context first. The Ovation Ultra GP was one of the truly exceptional guitars. Very few guitars made can be truly considered what people call “Les Paul killers”; the Ultra GP was one of them. It came in at nearly $400 more than a Les Paul so for buyers it was a massive risk when you could pay more for a brand that wasn't as established as Gibson. Hence, it didn't sell and only 400 or 500 were made. What I'll say about the Ovation Ultra GP, however, is that the reason it was $400 more was because there was nothing remotely cheap about it; no expense was spared on it's quality and construction. The only exception being of course that it was Made in Korea. Don't let the 'MIK' label fool you, however, if you are critical of a guitar's origins. This was a tone monster. It was, as one person has put it, a perfect example of how good imported guitars can be when built and designed to specifications, and passed through quality control to be analysed to the nth degree. As the years went on, it was left to wallow in junk shops.

'Star Power', however, saved the guitar in the form of one man – Joshua Homme, and one cannot ignore either the Ovation Ultra GP or indeed the Eastwood GP without automatically associating it with the 'Kyuss sound' or the 'QOTSA sound'. Incidentally, I didn't buy the Eastwood GP because of it's association to Joshua Homme; I bought it because it was a relatively rare sight on eBay and was, at the time of purchase, what I was looking for in an alternative to an Epiphone LP-type guitar. Images of quality kept running through my mind; reviews were all positive thus far.

But let's be honest for one second – this guitar, out of the box, was the only guitar I've held in my hands in 16 years of playing that I wanted to get rid of the second I met it.

Trying to find some tenuous comparison, I compare having this guitar to going on a date with somebody you're unsure of. As a man it's very difficult not to focus on a level of attraction you feel towards another individual. Not necessarily important but a bonus if the person is beautiful. So you get to the first date and there's no connection or chemistry whatsoever; you feel as though you're talking too much and all the common interests you share don't actually exist, and you're not particularly attracted to the person either. A few hours later and the date invites you back to his/her house for no other reason than to have sex, which if you're a man is very, very hard to turn down. So you get back to the house and have sex and, yet again, there's no connection there – it's just having cold, depressing, boring, meaningless and indifferent sex with somebody who is a complete stranger. Neither of you particularly want to be doing it, it feels as though because of the position you;re in that you're led by nothing more than obligation, and any sounds, sights, tastes or smells that otherwise indicate enjoyment are entirely fake.

You leave the house in the morning following a night of no sleep due to having a crisis of conscience over what you've just done and exchange phone numbers out of politeness more than anything. Throughout the week you hear nothing and then the following Friday you get a text that says “want to meet up again?” from last week's date. Following the text, you ask the question, “Do I really want this for the rest of my life?”

My decision with this guitar was - “I'm not even going to answer the text; I don't want this for the rest of my life.” Sure enough, I got rid of the guitar.

So contrary to some of the reviews of this guitar, what didn't I like about it? Well, for a start, if the whole point of the Ovation was to have a premium guitar with no expense spared then the whole point of this guitar was to make a guitar with the constant question looming over it's manufacture of 'how much is it likely to cost?' and the answer being 'no, too much; won't sell.'

Everything, seemingly, was done in the making of this guitar to cut corners, and what's strange about it is the fact that this was a re-issued as a 'tribute' to the Ovation and yet is it really that much of a fitting tribute when nothing about it remotely exudes quality? It's like giving a eulogy at a funeral by having the deceased's least favourite Rolling Stones song sung by a tribute band. “We can't get The Rolling Stones to sing 'You Can't Always Get What You Want' so here's the Tumbling Rocks to play 'Fool to Cry' – miss you, Dave!”.

For a start, I pulled this out of it's case and the first thing that struck me was the binding.

The only acoustic guitar I ever owned had a graphite back and something that vaguely resembled wood on the top, joined together by the absolute worst binding you could ever see on a guitar. It was terrible. It was the worst guitar ever made by anybody ever – it was just a generic Stagg electro-acoustic that's been rebadged with all manner of different names; the main one being Kimbara KC570. The felt-tipped binding on that guitar, which I paid £10 for, was also on the Eastwood GP. A guitar that costs £700 new should not have painted binding on it to emulate the real binding featured on the Ovation.

Of course, you could respray it to reveal the join of woods or just coat both woods in black because of the shameful glue-job the guys in Korea did, but then here's the dilemma with this guitar; the crux of my argument with the whole guitar. Why pay [in my case] £200 for a guitar that new, was £700, to make it look better when it should already look like a upper mid-range quality guitar? To add more woes, this binding was all over the guitar – up the neck, around the headstock. It was awful.

Moving on to the sound. For a start, if you are one of those drawn to this guitar by the 'Star Power' of Joshua Homme, let me tell you this first and foremost - no word of a lie - this is not an Ovation Ultra GP, and you probably don't have an Ampeg SVT bass amp that he's used from year zero. You will not and never will get Joshua Homme's sound from this guitar, and you will forever spend your life with it in your collection saying to your mates, either "this is like the guitar Josh Homme played!" or flat out lying and saying "this IS the guitar Josh Homme played." As said however, you will never in a million years get his sound with this guitar.

Here's why:

The quality of the guitar has been compromised. You cannot and will not emulate the sound made by that tone monster. The pick-ups are not DiMarzio Super 2's first of all, which were largely behind the sound of the original Ovation. They are 'Tribute' Super 2's, and upon testing the impedance of both, have less gain and are more in line with something you'd find on a Epiphone LP as standard. As such, they sound terrible, have a more 'vintage' tone about them, and have no degree of clarity whatsoever when playing chords, particularly at high gain, which the Super 2's can do until the end of the world.

Secondly, tracing the pick-ups to their electrical source, you will find nothing more than bog-standard JS-branded pots, which are made in Korea and sold, as new, for pennies. In this case, you get what you pay for. The capacitors are unknown – just red, vulgar and probably made from the worst plastic you can imagine.

So I asked myself, reprising the crux of my argument against this guitar - what can I do to improve this guitar? What could YOU do?

I could get some new Super 2's from DiMarzio or scour the earth looking for some original 80's Super 2's that had the unique cream covers on them. Then I could put some vintage DiMarzio pots or something along those lines in there along with some Soviet PIO capacitors, but then how much would that cost? £200? £300? I've already paid X amount for what was once upon a time a £700 guitar, and if I spend more on it trying to get it to sound like how it SHOULD sound, I might as well have saved up and bought a £1000 guitar in the first place. Second of all, how can I possibly justify whacking £300 worth of hardware into a guitar that looks as cheap as this?

Jamie Oliver could take a dump on a plate, cover it in a red wine jus with some Echalion shallots and fresh peppers with Parmentier potatoes on the side but it'd still be Jamie Oliver's dump stinking up the centre of the plate, and he'd charge you for the privilege of tasting it too. The sod.

Moving on to the other hardware on this guitar – and this was one of the biggest problems for me that I could never get used to, and who would, unless you're a masochist who enjoys punishment?

The bridge and the nut caused me more grief than on any guitar I've ever encountered before. The bridge in particular – I can honestly say I've never seen a bridge like it in my life – one specifically designed and unique to this guitar, and apparently made by the otherwise reputable company Gotoh.

I played this guitar for around 4 hours before I put it back in it's case and listed it back on eBay mainly because of this bridge. I held the guitar, played it, and the heel of my right hand has never been more battered, bruised and barked from hitting the bolts connecting the bridge to the body.

The bridge itself looked around 8mm too high off the body so naturally I screwed it (no Tune-O-Matics here, kids) right down to where it should be , flat against it, to make the bolts extrude less and cause less of a battering on the heel of my palm.

Ultimately, it made the guitar unplayable as the action was now too low and the strings, right up the fretboard, all the way to the bridge, over the pick-ups, were in contact with everything. I adjusted the bridge around 3mm from the body – still too low. I adjusted the bridge to 6mm from the body – battered the heel of my palm again. Between 4mm and 5mm was either too low or too high as well. Nothing worked. It didn't suit my style of playing at all.

When I pick up a guitar, I want to play it using the style that I have, which is generally pick in the centre between pick-ups (or right over the middle pick-up on an SSS configuration) with the heel of my palm touching the bridge slightly. On any other guitar I have, downstroking is not a problem, so why is the Eastwood the exception?

I laid the guitar down flat to have a look at the counter of the body to discover that it looks as though where the bridge has been installed, the top of the body has been shaved to the heel of the guitar at a 25 degree angle. Basically, the body is straight to the neck on the top all the way to the bridge pick-up and then it just drops down. Staying straight and true to the neck, it is necessary for the bridge to be around 8mm or 9mm away from the body at all times, which makes it impossible to ignore when playing it as every time I performed a downstroke, it took several layers off my skin in the process from hitting the bolts.

Was there any way to alleviate it? Yes, of course, but it would involve installing a new bridge. So again, back to the crux of my argument – why would I fork out another £100 for a decent bridge (and nut) when it should have been fine right from the very beginning? And do I really have time to look for one that actually fits? Especially as I noticed the holes for the bolts weren't parallel to the bridge pick-up. 

Taking all of that into consideration, the crux of my argument against this guitar is this – I was fortunate to buy it cheap at £200 but as new I would have paid around £700 for it. Making all the necessary changes to it, if it was my intention to turn it into a professional instrument, would cost an additional £400 to £500. I would want a respray to get rid of the nasty fake binding, and I wouldn't do that myself so it'd cost me another £100 in labour for that, and seriously, let me tell you that as soon as you notice this binding (and just how much of the crap there is), you'll want rid of it too.

So I've finally got the brand new Eastwood GP that I wanted and it's cost me £1300, so the question is this – clearly when making this guitar, Eastwood wanted to cut corners where Ovation didn't, to keep the price of the guitar down, but why bother doing that when customers, looking for a decent instrument to play, will end up spending a lot more than they expected to, to bring it up to speed anyway?

They might as well have just flat-out reissued the guitar, heel-less design, DiMarzio pick-ups and all, and let people buy it for the price they'll ultimately spend on it sorting out Eastwood's mistakes. But then why would anybody do that when they could buy a Gibson or PRS, or something similar, with a solid reputation, for the same price? But then, wasn't that the argument against buying the Ovation Ultra GP in the first place?

It's weirdly ironic that the Eastwood has similar problems when it comes to distribution of it's guitar as Ovation did, and I'm sure when they made this guitar, the intention wasn't to pay tribute to the problems Ovation had in marketing the original Ultra GP. That's what has happened though. The difference is, however, that if you are lucky (and rich) enough get an original Ovation Ultra GP, you will get an amazing Ovation Ultra GP. But if you are unfortunate enough to find an Eastwood GP for sale, all you'll get is a crap Eastwood GP.