EART GW2-Pro Headless Electric Guitar fixed Bridge for Travel, Roasted Ash Solid-Body - Wenge Neck,Trans white/natural/Solid black(GD)

Good guitar with quality sound

I already own the original GW-2 non-pro version. I had been watching the GW–2 PRO and I could not find reviews but liked what I saw and when it went on sale I pulled the trigger and bought one. I could not be more satisfied. I'm a very proficient at setting up guitars and the original GW-2 had an amazing neck the frets were absolutely perfect, polished with no high or low spots. The bridge is not bad but there's a lot of adjustments and the intonation and action needed adjusting. Not a big deal, but the GW-2 PRO was set up absolutely perfect. As expected the neck was perfect. The neck relief was at about .006" the action hight was perfect across all the strings. I restrung the guitar with the D"Addario XT's 10-48's and was amazed to find the intonation was perfect using a Peterson HD strobescope tuner. The tuners are very well-made with thrust bearings on each tuner and easy to tune with. Also the guitar likes to stay in tune. The head stock has dual locking screws for each string. There's a small ball bearing underneath each screw which does a great job holding the string in place. The only problem is when you restring the ball bearing drops down blocking the hole that you put the string through. It was easier to restring by removing the screws and the ball bearings. Be careful not to lose them. Also put a very slight bend about a quarter of an inch from the end of the string to help guide it through the second hole. It's not that big of a deal. I normally take my time changing my strings anyhow. The pick ups are better than you would expect for a guitar in this price range. I would imagine there are people who are going to want a hotter pick up, but these pick ups have no problem keeping up. I provided a few pictures that will help answer some of your questions.

Decided to give this another shot since it was quite nice for the price. Which means I ended up getting this 3 times - the first got smashed in transit (in reviews of other Eart modes, their single-box packaging causing damage comes up a lot), the second was defective, and the third was finally a nice instrument.Soldering on both ones I actually got looks good, the neck and frets were excellent on both, and the tuners quite stable on both. Fretboard on both has been quite dry, so have some fretboard oil on hand - not a functional issue, but some oil will prevent issues and improve the look of the (gorgeous ebony) fretboard. Pickups are fine, I’ll have to let it sit for a bit before having deep opinions - pic attached of the label on them, says 57 Classic.The frustrating “headstock” locks are still a concern but you don’t need to actually take the screws and ball bearings out to get the strings in and out, although it’s still quite frustrating to do get the strings through the damn things. The ball bearings are 3mm in diameter so you can replace them if you lose them, the screws are M4x6mm flat tip grub screws - I had trouble finding replacements on Amazon, but McMaster-Carr has em, including black ones which I think look better than the steel ones. The screws will also keep the strings in place without the ball bearings, although I don’t know how reliable that would be long term of if it would cause tuning instability.Original review: I liked almost everything about this guitar, except the bridge was broken when I got it so one string would never be able to hold intonation.The one thing I disliked that wasn’t an outright defect is using the “headstock” where you lock the strings is an exercise in frustration - lots of feeding strings through tiny, misaligned holes you can’t really see, and tiny screws/ball bearings that are easily lost. That’s the main reason I’m just sending this back and not trying for a replacement.

The overall craftsmanship of this guitar can’t be argued. They did a beautiful job on the finish, and the neck has a great feel. The fret nibs everyone talks about are a real plus. My concern with guitar has to do with the bridge and locking nut. Apparently, this is the second version of a bridge by EART. This version has tuner keys, however the tuning keys on this guitar kept slipping. The bridge also had some noticeable scratches and indents on it. As for the locking nut, each string runs through the locking nut but is held down with a small allen screw and two tiny ball bearings. I found it very difficult to change strings and not misplace, or lose these small parts.

I really liked the feel and sound of this guitar but there were a couple of finish and fretwork issues that i couldn't get over so I had to return it. I have talked to many individuals who own this model online on various platforms and my experience seems to be the outlier. Most seem to get great guitars. I must have received a lemon.Upon my review EART personally reached out to me and were very thoughtful and professional. I was truly impressed by their customer service. This was, admittedly, a surprise. EART definitely cares about the quality of their instruments and I will definitely buy from them again.

I did have to send a guitar back and order another because my first guitar had lots of high frets that weren't seated all of the way down into the neck, and the nut was terrible. The second guitar had a fantastic neck as most reviewers seem to get as well, so I think in general, it's safe to assume most units are great. But the nut was just as terrible. The guitar has a 0-fret, so the nut isn't really a nut, it's a string spacer. But the string spaces are cut WAY too wide, they're caverns. If you bend notes, the strings slip around. It's unacceptable at any price. Eart customer service took care of me, though, and I was able to get the nut repaired locally in a few days and with that, and a basic setup, the guitar absolutely rocks! I don't think you can get such a cool headless with stainless steel frets at any reasonable price but from Eart or Latitude, and I don't like the Latitude bridge or diamond inlays, so I'm a big fan of the Eart.Some other positives - the compound fretboard radius is a nice feature that I love to have, but more importantly, the compound neck profile to go along with it is genius. Where the frets are 10" radius, you get a more C shaped fender style neck, which is perfect for chords and riffs, and then as the frets move to a 16" radius, you get a very Ibanez style D shape, although not as razer thin. This is much better to support your thumb behind the neck for solos and lead parts. It's so clever I wonder why it's not more common, and here it is on an inexpensive Chinese guitar!The pickups sound ok. They're not great, They're far from terrible. I can EQ them into a very nice set of tones, and I'm not dying to replace them. But the guitar is worth upgrading if you find yourself wanting more from the pickups.And if you do big bends on the high E string, I have bad news for you. This bridge will destroy E strings because they get pulled loose from the knot by the ball end since the string isn't going around a bend over the saddle. I was pulling my hair out because I LOVE the guitar but couldn't count on the E string staying put. I found a solution, though! I simply added a tiny bit of solder to the string at the knot. It's called tinning, it took me 60 seconds to do, and I bought an extra set of e strings and tinned them all in 5 minutes. Now I have a year's supply of invincible e strings. Small hassle, but also D'addario sells "reinforced for tremolo" strings for this purpose that are pre-soldered. If you don't have a soldering iron and hit 3 half step bends, get those strings and use them for the high strings at least.