I bought the Recording King ROST-7-TS tenor guitar from Sun Valley
Guitars after seeing their name as forum sponsor. I am a beginner,
and after shopping around for a mid-century cheap guitar I decided to
purchase the Recording King. I may tell the story of how I came to
that decision, but first about this guitar.
The appearance is neat and clean. The guitar looks like the finish was
applied prior to assembly, and it was assembled from a kit of parts.
The entire back, sides, and neck have some kind of black plastic finish.
The top looks laminated with a printed wood grain finish. It is realistic
enough that I can't be certain the pattern is printed, but it looks like
a laminated furniture top. The trim around the top lines up everywhere.
This guitar looks fine for the price. I have seen a couple $200 imported
mandolins that don't look as good.
One disappointment is the frets are as cut. They have sharp burrs on the
ends. All of them. While I have not hurt my fingers on them, I think
if labor was cheap they should have filed the ends. It would have been
easier I think if they had done that before finishing.
The neck is straight up to fret 14 where it joins the body. Then there
is a little angle difference with the frets over the top. The angle of
the neck is slightly back which lowers the action a bit. The string
height at fret 12 is about 0.085". If this were a mandolin I would want
the strings a bit lower, but this feels all right to me. The tuners look
all right and work smoothly.
Though the top looks flat it arches out to a maximum of about 1/4 inch
just south of the bridge.
The guitar comes in a cardboard box. It was double boxed as I received it.
It does not come with any instructions or papers from Recording King, but
it does comes with a 4mm Allen wrench which fits in a fitting inside the
sound hole. there is no plate next to the nut for adjusting a tension rod.
This is is suggestive, but I don't know.
When I received the guitar and tuned it up, starting with the low strings,
the A string broke. I sent the seller a message. They quickly responded
by calling me. They said this is not uncommon and volunteered to send
me a set of strings right away.
I tried playing with 3 strings just to see. I don't know many songs that
use all 4 strings or courses. One thing I noticed is a sharp corner at
edge of the fret board. It is not sharp enough to cut, but it digs into
my index finger. That might be due to using sub optimal technique, but
my mandolin has a slight bevel on the edge of the fret board. Looking
at the construction I can see why they did that, but I consider this to
be a design flaw.
I will try to attach some photos here. The photos were taken without the
A string. Let me know if there is something I missed.
I will report about the sound later.
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