If you’re stumbling on this page, you’re probably looking for reviews on Solar Guitars! This page was created so that you understand what you are getting yourself into when purchasing this product in America (and maybe Europe).
On the surface, Solar Guitars presents itself as the affordable players guitar. The guitars are sexy and built with extremely decent hardware for the price! There is a lot of hype surrounding their products. The fanboyism and purchase bias found in discussions is very prevalent!
If you are interested in purchasing one, I strongly recommend you take the time to read this article in its entirety before making your decision!
As a lefty, I am always limited in my selection of guitars. I jumped on the occasion when the A2.6C LH was available in October 2020!
The price (639$USD) made me a little bit uneasy since the company is still relatively new, and I knew that I would get dinged for taxes when it would land in Canada. Final landed cost (guitar/shipping/duties/fees/taxes) for the guitar was 1200$CAD.
There have been many Quality Check (QC) complaints attributed to the covid pandemic. According to Ola Englund, the QC staff can no longer travel to Indonesia to perform quality testing. The guitars are sent to Spain, where they are opened one by one and inspected (YouTube Reference). Any guitar that doesn’t make the cut goes into B-stock, which can be found in the Community->Special Offers section of the Solar Guitars website.
The guitar arrived in the standard “guitar with no case” packaging: A box inside a box. The guitar was properly packed and secured for the trip! The guitar looked gorgeous!
After this brief moment of joy, it all started going downhill!
A quick look at the bridge pickup revealed a crack on the left corner!
Crack on corner
Not the end of the world! The crack is small, barely noticeable and will not have any impact!
Taking a glance on the other side, we can find a paint blob:
Paint blob
This, on the other hand, could be a problem down the line. Once the paints pops, it will definitely be noticeable and could chip away more of the paint as time goes by!
Moving on, I take a look at the selector switch and am taken away by this beauty:
I literally laughed after seeing this! Did they use beavers to make that cut??
It was at this point that I realized the QC problems are real!
Even my cheap POS 250$CAD Aliexpress Telecaster copy has a properly cut section for the selector:
I reversed the guitar to take a look at the ferrules. At this point I knew I was probably going to be disappointed:
They are improperly installed, and the leftmost one cracked the wood:
I grabbed the Aliexpress guitar to compare:
While they are also shitty, it is actually better than the Solar! Remember we are comparing a 1200$ guitar with a 250$ one!
Another issue that cannot be shown in pictures is the paint near the jack. Unlike the rest of the body, it is textured and rough, as if a second inconsistent pass was made. That part cannot be seen but felt, so pictures are useless!
The next part is where my jaw literally dropped: the neck!
One gallery per side:
It is peeling at the binding from top to bottom on both sides!
Not a single sharp fret end though! Could it be that someone filed the neck from top to bottom in 1 pass on each side??
From Ola’s explanation, the guitar is QC’d in Indonesia where it is produced, shipped to Spain, inspected a second time, then labelled appropriately (New or B-stock)!
I simply cannot believe a human being working in any QC department looked at this guitar with all its issues and approved it. A B-stock is expected to be in better condition than this (you can look for yourself on the website)!
Besides these minor (LOL) flaws, I can attest the guitar plays great and seems properly setup from the factory. The pickups are very decent and sound great! They do the job extremely well! The neck is also very comfortable.
At the end of the day, this is absolutely not a 1200$CAD guitar. It’s a bad 700$CAD guitar! A 600$ LTD or Schecter would give this a run for its money!
As you can imagine, I did contact Solar-Guitars about this issue. They request that all communication with them remain confidential, and I will respect that!
While I cannot say what solutions were offered, I can confirm that even the best scenario would have left me out of HUNDREDS of dollars! Please remember that when you decide to place an order!
I can only imagine a guitarist, working hard for months to earn enough money to purchase a guitar and be put in the same situation as myself!
While it is very possible I simply got unlucky, it does not change the fact that the consumer should not have to pay extra or lose any money for receiving a defective product!
For now, I decided to keep the guitar and create this blog post to inform prospective buyers of the risks involved with purchasing from Solar Guitars! Hopefully you will be luckier than I was!
– A random dude that bought a guitar!
To answer a few comments that might pop in your head after reading this:
You really got unlucky, Solar is great!
Possibly, but being unlucky by getting an inferior product that does not meet expectations should not cost the customer hundreds of dollars more! It’s not his fault the product is defective! Any respectable company would take the hit!
Bruuh, it plays great, stop whining!
It’s easy to be on the other side of the fence when it’s not your 1200$. Any rational human being would be extremely disappointed and angry if they spent 1200$ on a guitar that looked like this. They could have spent 500$ to get similar/better results!
It’s because of covid, cut them some slack!
No. If covid is causing them production issues, they should step up their QC game or literally halt production until the problems are resolved! The pandemic is not an excuse to pump out defective/inferior products!
You have no life wasting your time on this!
Working in IT, setting up the blog and writing the post didn’t take too long. I also dislike getting f****d! Had I seen something like this prior to purchasing, I would have stuck to getting a Schecter or an Ibanez! I can take the hit and keep the guitar, but I wouldn’t want someone who can’t go through this!