Fazley FDC418 Butterscotch Blonde Electric Guitar - Punk rock street cred at a price which stays true to those origins. I went to the Bax website and looked this one up because it caught my attention on a few internet postings. Although it was available new, I saw that there were a few 'B Stock' ones available off the site shop for a bit less than the 'new' price (B Stock guitars are typically returns which are like new, but since they've been handled a bit, are sold at a slight discount. They may not be in the original box, which doesn't bother me, so I ended up paying £92.35 for it, including shipping, which is about a tenner less than it would ordinarily have been in total, so this was genuinely a sub-one hundred quid guitar purchase including delivery. Since it was a B stock product, it was literally just the guitar in a box with none of the typical stuff you typically get with guitars of this nature (usually this would be a plastic bag with a strap, lead and maybe an allen key for adjusting the truss rod). Since I have a ton of these accessories already, this did not concern me. The guitar itself was well protected in bubble wrap and placed in a very large Bax Music cardboard box which ensured it was delivered in good condition. Delivery was pretty fast, roughly five days or so (since that included a weekend), and communication from Bax with regard to invoices, delivery tracking etc, was excellent, so I can say for sure that you can buy from them with complete confidence and you will get excellent service too. On to the guitar itself... As you can see from the pictures, the Fazley FDC418 is basically inspired by the general appearance of a 1958 double cutaway Gibson Les Paul Junior model. However, it is not a direct clone of one of these, being different in some respects if you put one next to it. The most obvious difference between this and a Gibson LP Junior, is the neck joint, whereby a LP Junior neck joins the double cutaway body at the very last fret, which affords good access to all the frets, whereas this FDC418 neck joins the body at the 19th fret, which means access to 'the dusty end' last couple of frets is not quite as easy as it is on the Gibson, so if you like doing string bends at the 22nd fret, this is something to bear in mind, however, since this means the fretboard projects more into the body on the FDC418, it does end up with the guitar being approximately two inches shorter in overall length than a typical LP-style guitar, which offers the advantage of it being slightly less of a stretch to play the thing up at the open fret end. This may suit a person of smaller stance, and does give you a little bit more room to maneuver on a small stage if you are gigging in a tight venue, as is frequently the case with pub gigs. The shorter overall length of the thing, despite it being a scale length of 24.75 inches (629 mm), means the stop-tailpiece wrap around bridge is mounted slightly further back into the body than on an LP Junior, and this too means it is a bit less of a stretch to do palm muting, and might also more easily facilitate volume control 'violining' techniques too, so the differences offer both advantages and disadvantages - less high end fret access, but generally a bit less of a stretch for all other types of playing. I'm inclined to think this might also mean the FDC418 has a bit more sustain than a LP Junior, and it is probably a little bit more robust than the Gibson in terms of resisting damage, although it does share the same headstock tilt-back angle as a Gibson (approximately 17 degrees, so, in common with Gibson Les Pauls, don't let it fall over!). Construction-wise, and quite unusual for a guitar in this price range, the FDC418 has a set (i.e. glued-in) neck joint as opposed to the more commonly-seen screw joints of most budget guitars, and this is a good thing for rigidity and sustain. Generally-speaking it is well made too, which is of course one of the advantages modern CNC manufacturing has brought us all, whereby these things are just as well-made as much more expensive guitars. There is the odd slight bump you can feel on the neck heel joint, but this is very minor, is smooth and so does not detract from either its looks or playability, it's more of a feature than a problem and frankly, it gives it a bit of character. The glossy finish is excellent quality; there was a very slight blemish on mine, but I think this was from a minor ding it had received (it being B-stock). This is pretty hard to spot and doesn't bother me, because at some point, all guitars will get one or two of these if you play them, so in fact it gets you past that moment of annoyance where you put your first scratch on your shiny new toy. Guitars are meant to played, not hung on a wall and never touched! Out of the box, the thing did actually have a pretty good action, but I wanted this lower, so I did a bit of fret dressing, removed the nut, files that down, shimmed it a bit to balance it out. As a result of this, it now has an incredibly low action which, thanks to a fairly flat Gibson-esque fretboard radius, means it does not choke out when doing those Johnny Thunders-style double string bends up near the dusty end. But having said that, in all honesty, if you are not too confident with having at your guitar to make such tweaks (not that it's super hard to do anyway), it is perfectly playable as it comes, so I would recommend getting the action down a bit in this way, especially on a stop-tailpiece guitar, as this will definitely improve the intonation setting possibilities if you like playing all over the neck. This is another great thing about cheaper guitars; you are usually less nervous about laying into them with your files and such to improve stuff! The hardware is pretty nice; it features a saddle compensated lightning-bolt wraparound bridge, which means intonation adjustment is very possible thanks to the two screws which allow the bridge to be shifted back and forth to suit where you want it, and contrary to what you sometimes find on cheaper guitars, the metal is actually fairly decent quality. The chromed tuners do have a few slightly rough bits on their finish from the casting process, which betrays their comparatively cheap production (you could file these rough spots down if it bothered you), but with regard to holding tuning, which is what really matters, they do so pretty well. This is important with a stop-tailpiece, as everything you can do to prevent such guitars going out of tune helps with intonation. You could of course swap these tuners out for better ones, but I haven't felt this is anything urgent that I need to do, and will, at least for the time being, stick with the ones it came with. As it came, it was fitted with pretty light strings - I think they were 009s. I suspect it would play slightly better with 010s which I find tend to suit a 24.75 inch scale length, but since this is just a matter of changing them this is not a problem of course. You might personally find 009s or even lighter might suit you, so this is more of a personal preference than anything else. The electrics are good, with a some usable settings available from the potentiometers. This was a pleasant surprise, as it is often a weak point on cheaper guitars, and whilst when you do find that to be the case, it's a relatively easy fix to stick some better pots in there, the fact that you won't have to do so is always welcome. The classic dog-ear P90 bridge pick up is of course the beating heart of a LP Junior-style guitar, and if I had a complaint at all, it would be that this is perhaps a little bit on the muddy side compared to a really top-notch quality P90, but this is nevertheless acceptable for the price because it's by no means terrible, definitely still sounds like a P90. I would certainly be okay with gigging it as it comes, but I suspect an after-market P90 with a bit more treble response one would cut through the mix a bit and offer a bit more usability when bashing out raucous rock music. As such, I have ordered a Warman Dogs'o' War P90, which has ceramic magnets and a 9k ohms for a bit more sass, with which to replace the stock P90, but I certainly won't throw the one it came with in the trash, as it would probably be okay as bridge pick up on one of my other guitars, where I'm less in need of some treble from it, so don't worry about keeping the original one in there too much, as it will serve you pretty well. But, should you feel the need to swap the P90 out as I intend to, it's worth bearing in mind that my replacement P90 was only 20 quid, so we'll still be coming in at a pocket-friendly price even with this modification. And that's critical with this guitar, because... Anyone who knows anything about guitars such as the original LP Junior and Melody Maker Gibsons, will know these were originally budget late-Fifties/early Sixties guitars aimed at students for the most part. These guitars found themselves in pawn shops in the early Seventies, and they were gleefully bought by guitarists such as Johnny Thunders and Joan Jett, who were able to get themselves a decently-made used guitar for typically around $75 or so back then. It was this which gave them a new lease of life and made them the punk and new-wave classics they are today, being in large part responsible for shaping the sound of punk and indie rock. This is why you now pay quite a bit for them even though this is rather contrary to their original budget-friendly legacy. Fortunately, nowadays with improved manufacturing techniques, we can skip past all searching for good quality second-hand bargains in junk and pawn shops, because even inexpensive guitars are pretty well constructed these days, thanks to computer-controlled milling machines making these more economical to manufacture to high tolerances, as evidenced by this thing. In short, if you are more about genuine punk/rock street cred, than you are about posing dad-rock headstock logo snobbery, and you want some of that LP Junior action at a price everyone can afford, then you should get yourself one of these FDC418s. Having done that, proudly flash that Fazley logo around the stage as you rock out at your gig, because it's just about as punk street cred as you can to bash around with a guitar that costs less than a ton, but which has the looks, the build quality, the sound and the playability, but without the eye-watering price tag. Johnny Thunders would approve, and I bet you will too.