New Guitar Day: Agile 2500: Not Impressed

It finally happened.  I had a bad "New Guitar Day."  It was bound to happen sometime in my lifetime.  But some of this is on me.  Let me start at the beginning.

As I was looking over the Rondo Music website, home of Agile Guitars, I saw a B-Stock guitar that was exactly what I was looking for.  It was a Les Paul style guitar with P-90's.  I didn't want the P-90's so much as I wanted the P-90 route.  I was going to put mini-humbuckers in it.

It's easier to find a Les Paul style guitar with P-90's than mini-humbuckers.  Since I was going to change pickups anyway, even if it had mini-humbuckers, I looked for the best deal I could find.  Unfortunately, that came to bite me in the butt.

So this blue flamed, Les Paul styled guitar was actually marked down quite a bit in price.  It was considered B-Stock due to some damage on the fingerboard.  I thought, "Well, that's nothing.  I'm sure to accidentally bang it around in the first week.  It's going to have more dings than that in a short time."

So I bought it at a greatly discounted price due to the damage and finish imperfections.  When I received the guitar I had so much going on I didn't actually play it.  I took it out of the box, and put it on my workbench.  I then went out of town for a few days.  So I had it for a bit before even getting to mess around with it.

Once I played it I noticed the action was insanely high.  I thought, "Well, it probably just came from South Korea, and no one has even looked at it.  No matter."  But matter it did.  Usually when I start work on a guitar I do everything at once.  This was no different.

I started with a fret dress.  I then removed the P-90 pickups.  I realized to fit the mini-humbuckers I would have to do a few modifications.  Namely, I needed to cut holes in the route so that the pickup feet would fit.

Here is what it looked like after I cut the holes for the feet:

I also had to drill holes for the mini-humbucker pickup rings.  (Note: not pictured.)  That took a bit of time and effort as the rings just barely covered the hole.

After a lot of back and forth I managed to get the mini-humbuckers installed, I started to set the guitar up.  That's when I noticed I was having problems with frets, 14, 15, and 16.  I still had dead spots.

I couldn't figure out why that would be.  That is, until I looked down the neck.  It was then I discovered that where the neck met the body, the heel was kicked up.  I was instantly furious.  Not just at myself, but at Rondo Music for letting that guitar out of the factory.

For those who know me, know I worked as the repair department for Dean Guitars.  At Dean we never would have let a guitar like that be sold, even as B-Stock.  It should have been marked at X-Stock, stripped of it's parts, and the body destroyed.

I wrote Rondo Music since they don't have a publicly listed phone number.  I told them I had modified the guitar, but since it shouldn't have been sold in the first place, could I return it?  Frankly, I received a lot of attitude in the message back.

I wrote explaining that I was, in fact, a luthier who actually went to luthiery school, and apprenticed under a master luthier.  I told them that guitar should have never left the factory.  I'll admit, I told him that when I received the guitar, the strings were so high you could shoot arrows off of it.  Of course, they had the action that high so it would make the 14th, 15th, and 16th frets playable.

What I received back was an E-mail critical of my skills.  It also stated that they dealt with 50,000 guitars, and knew what they were doing.  Also, if I had bought a Ford or Chevy, modified it, and tried to return it, would the dealer accept that return?  He didn't think so.  But he finished the e-mail saying, just return it, and they would see what they could do.  He wasn't promising anything.

I'll admit, I was pretty hostile.  The e-mail was written in a very nasty tone.  So I went to work on the guitar.  I took the mini-humbuckers out, and reinstalled the P-90's.  It was then a thought occurred to me.  If I sent it back, they would just try to set it up and then send it back to me.  Well, since they did such a shitty job the first time, why would I trust them to do it a second?

So I set the guitar up to where it would be playable.  That way, if they said, "Nothing was wrong with it," I would know they didn't even try.  That, or they have some really lazy and incompetent people working there.  So I set it up.

I raised the action on the high E (treble) side.  I had both sides at 2/32nd's.  That basically what I set a Floyd Rose equipped guitar to.  That way, players can dive bomb or pull back as far as possible and it won't fret out.  Would you know that just raising it that much cleared it enough so that all notes were playable?  Again, I was furious at myself for not trying that earlier.  I just got into too much of a hurry.

So now I had a dilemma.  If I sent the guitar back, they would look at it, play it, and say there's nothing wrong with it except for the holes I drilled in it.  They would then just send it back to me leaving me in the same place I was before.

So after consulting a friend I decided that I wouldn't return it.  When it comes down to it I modified the guitar.  After fret-dressing and setting the guitar up correctly there was nothing Rondo Music could do with it.  I doubt I was going to get a refund, so why bother trying to return it?

So I wrote a very straight-forward e-mail saying, "After continuing work on it, I made the guitar playable.  Since I had modified the guitar I understand I couldn't return the guitar for a refund."  I left it at that.  I also received a very simple return message that said, "Thanks for the update."

Now, I understand I should have looked the guitar over before I started work on it.  I'm just so used to performing all my work at once.  I've found there's not much I can't do, but I'm used to working on guitars that would pass a basic inspection.

What upsets me is the way the e-mails were worded.  They came across as pretty nasty.  I mean, I'm actually a returning customer.  That's right.  I bought an Agile guitar four years ago.  I wrote a blog about it.  Here it is:

New Guitar Day: Christmas Edition

So it's not like I've never dealt with Rondo Music before.  I like my Root Beer colored Agile.  I thought it was a better quality guitar than any of the comparable South Korean made Epiphone Les Paul's.  But this blue 2500 fell far from the tree.

And the lousy thing is I put the P-90's back in it.  I have been working myself back up to putting the mini-humbuckers back in it, but I just haven't had the motivation.  In fact, I forgot to take photos of the guitar with the mini-humbuckers in it, hence, why none are posted on this blog.

Eventually I will get around to installing the mini-humbuckers.  After I do that I'll post a blog reviewing them.  The pickups I bought were a set of Alnico 2 mini-humbuckers by Artec.

Again, what upsets me about this guitar is the way I was treated, and that Rondo Music would let a guitar like that leave their factory.  I have it playing alright, but it should be so much better.  I'm also hoping that the kick up at the heel doesn't get worse with time.  Right now, I'm not sure I will ever buy from Rondo Music again.