First Act VE591 Single Cutaway Electric Guitar with V-Stack Preamp

You've seen the VW commercials (buy a car, get a guitar). But you also know that First Act guitars aren't quite "up there" with Fender, Gibson, ESP, etc. So here's the VW guitar, without the car, and at the current price, why not? Here's the deal; the guitar is an import, with decent weight and all real wood construction. One color. Decent finish and decent fit. Neck is slightly wide, chunky, decent fret job with no sharp edges. Black binding on neck and top of body. Wide, jumbo frets, decent leveling. Out of the box, I tuned it and it was playable. Tuners are typical generic, which could be upgraded. Like most import guitars, very dirty and dusty out of the box; needs a wipe down and I usually clean the fretboard with some denatured alcohol. Very sparkly and chromed out. Sound? Well, it's cool. I played it through an older Boogie and the clean tones do ring and sustain. The pre-amp does give it what is advertised, an analog boost/distortion. Remember the old distortion pedals? Not quite death metal distortion, but a nice-sounding, 70's rock distortion. Old school. Oh, and the best feature is the direct out to headphones, computer, stereo, etc, which gives the same "big" sound and doesn't sound like a toy when compressed. I bought this because of the price, and 'cause it's different. I don't gig, but I can't imagine it being that type of guitar. Don't wait. Get it from J&R. It's $10 more but these will sell out. Also, if you live in NY, Amazon will collect tax so it's worth paying $10 more just to get it.