Is This Cheap Firefly SG Copy Trash?

[@mcdingus5081]

The thing that rarely gets mentioned on KZbin is that buying these cheap guitars is not a good idea for people who don't have the tools and don't know how to setup a guitar properly. I'm willing to bet that SG knockoff will play fine with a little bit of tweaking. First on the list is that fretboard needs to be conditioned with lemon oil. It's dried out and that's why it doesn't look right. Personally, I'd get a decent low cost set of pickups for it- but the existing ones can be fixed by wax potting them. After that, making sure the neck has the proper relief and setting up the intonation will do wonders for its playability. No matter how expensive your guitar is- if you expect the neck to have perfect relief after shipping from one climate to the other- you are expecting too much. Anything made of wood is going to alter itself depending on the climate it is kept in. The action being too low is a great indication that the neck relief has changed. Without question I would expect it to buzz on the upper frets if that's the case. That's a pretty easy fix, and I bet just fixing that will make the intonation better as well.

[@michaelolz]

Oh my dear Lord. Did they send you a massive Stew Mac gift card with that piece of crap? 😆

[@TheMixWithABD]

Let me tell you something. Firefly was going to send me a guitar and I’m pretty sure they saw this video because they never sent a guitar and stopped replying to emails…

[@zarlodious1]

loved that face of dissappointment. I have had two firefly 338 and they are both awesome after pickup upgrades

[@louisstokes1898]

No. It is not. I bought one recently, and the quality, setup, sound, playability is very good. The "lizard green burst" color that I have looks amazing. Love it Definitely recommend it.

[@TheMixWithABD]

Love my firefly v. Can't say the same for this beast.

[@freeman1810]

Dig your content broski. Is that a Portuguese flag on your hat?

[@TheMixWithABD]

Thank you! Its actually a clothing company called teddy fresh

[@GothicXlightning]

One of the biggest mistakes of our broken mankind would be to call TRASH a Guitar just for been a low budged one i adore this SGs underrated great guitars as all Doom Metal hells

[@GothicXlightning]

ALSO Les paul hating on the ultra underrated SG beauty did made me lose a level of respect for the man hopefully he did gain much more appreciation for it before his time to move on into another lives... hopefully

[@TheMixWithABD]

I have another firefly that’s great. And other cheap guitars that I love. This guitar is bad

[@carlg7842]

I'm a bass player, and wanted to mess around with guitar. After reading a bunch of reviews and seeing videos, I bought a firefly LP. What a piece of sh!t LOL. The consistency must be really variable with these, because the one I got, feels like absolute trash. Fit and finish is decent, some glue boogers, a handful of flaws, the gold hardware looks incredibly cheap. It's gotta weigh 12 lbs, and the neck feels like big end of baseball bat. I don't even want to waste my time setting it up, let alone modding it to make it sound better.

[@TheMixWithABD]

Man that’s not great. Yea I feel like the quality varies wildly. The V I got is great. But the SG I got was terrible. Go with a Harley Benton. They absolutely kill it. In a good way lol. Or spend some more and get a Sire or epiphone or fender classic vibe.

[@TimmyAndTammyScumbag]

While I appreciate your presentation and your honesty, I'm left with a couple questions. For example, when you mentioned that you had tuned the guitar twice prior to plugging it in and that here it was, out of tune again-- are those the stock strings? If the answer is yes, no wonder. They use the cheapest, shittiest garbage strings they can find and I'm sure they expect that the majority of people will prefer to put their own strings on it anyway, particularly if you use a different gauge- the point being that, yes, shitty budget strings are going to suck, so no surprise there. Did you thoroughly stretch the strings prior to filming the video? You didnt mention that or if you did, it went over my head. Also, did you intonate the guitar? If not, I certainly wouldn't expect tuning stability. The above points go to the reasonable expectation that you will have to provide better strings and hardware if you expect a $180 guitar to be gig worthy. What one should not expect, at any price you pay for something new, is anything that is defective or damaged, has wickedly microphonic pickups, or if the guitar is completely unplayable or unfixable. Stuff like tuning stability issues, crappy strings, crappy pickups, a garbage bridge... All things anyone with any knowledge would more or less expect when paying under $200. I'm guessing we would agree on that. The problem with Firefly is that they are ridiculously inconsistent-- and it's gotten worse in the last year or two. I bought an FFLG (gold) about 8 months ago and my experience, luckily, was good. The guitar arrived undamaged, not even any finish flaws I could find. Before a week had gone by, I had replaced the strings, I had to file 3 of the 6 slots in the nut a smidge wider because they were too narrow and pinching the stock 10-46 strings, let alone how the 10-52 set I like to use would have fit. The saddles on the original bridge were so sharp it hurt to palm mute. I bought a Guyker rolling saddle bridge for $15, I was lucky to already have a set of old Grover tuners on hand, and after taking care of those issues (oops, almost forgot the truss rod tweak 😂) the guitar has been great. It stays in tune, has nice, low, uniform action, and it sounds good... uhh... in my living room. With the one I got, I noticed the bridge pickup seemed exceptionally bright and thin compared to humbuckers in my other guitars... but it didn't bother me because I have a carpeted living room with two couches and a bunch of furniture that soak up high frequencies-- but when I took it to my bands rehearsal space and let my guitarist (I'm the drummer) try it out, he unplugged his Les Paul Std (Marshall JCM2000 and 1960A cab) and plugged my LG in directly afterward and, holy shit, it was night and day. The LG was annoyingly bright and thin and practically grating in comparison to his Les Paul. So then I replaced the bridge pickup with what I think is an old Maxon out of a 70s Aria SG copy. NOW I finally have a guitar that doesn't disappoint in some way. I've been seeing a lot on the internet about guitars arriving with substantial damage, up to headstocks being broken off, yet without any visible damage to the shipping box. What does that tell you? Right. QC is asleep. I've also heard accounts of Guitars Garden, their US distributor, handling serious damage claims from customers, by offering pittances of $20, which would make my blood boil if that happened to me. To be fair, I've also heard about instances where they just sent someone a new guitar. In addition to those things, the colors of the guitars shown on their website are almost never how they appear in person. It seems that for everyone who gets a good guitar, someone else gets a lemon. But to me, the worst part is them claiming mahogany bodies (disproven by several people) and rosewood fretboards. That's just plain false advertising. Anyway, in the end, if you're going to spend $200, get a Harley Benton. I have a couple of those too and they are absolutely better and more consistent instruments for roughly the same price.