Fender Duo Sonic - HS - Maple Fingerboard - Crimson Red Transparent, with 2-Year Warranty

This is a weird guitar. Any guitar that is small scale with maple fretboards have extra brightness. But if they are small enough they get darker, so you get a balance. So this little bridge humbucker sounds bigger than it is with the right amp. Anything mid heavy. I'm just not used to a humbucker being this versatile, and that's before you use the coil tap.There are no shortage of guitars in this price range with a humbucker in bridge if that's all you need. If you want a mustang feel in a very light guitar in 24" short scale, that can play the hardest music with a string swap, this is your guitar. If you want your guitar to also play shoegaze, this is your guitar. If you don't care about 24" scale and just want to "rock", check out Epiphone. Save a few hundred. I'd also say check out Ibanez. Their prices have been good on entry level rocker guitars.If you are just buying it because it's pretty, good reason. That was my reason. It gets even prettier in person. It's such a great combination. I snapped mine up on sale. I'd say 799 is a little high for this one.

There was a slight problem with the guitar that I received. The High E string buzzed despite the saddle being set at its highest point. I'm still giving it five stars because both Fender and Amazon stepped up to make sure that everything worked out. I had the nut replaced because it was thought that the slot for that string may have been cut just tiny bit too deep. Changing the nut was perfect and I actually put a better quality nut on. I also had the guitar completely set up by a professional. For 95% of the guitars out there, when you buy them new they would benefit from a complete setup. If you're very comfortable doing it on your own fine but I wanted to be sure this worked the way I wanted it so I paid for the setup done with the proper tools. The Comfort level increased dramatically with low action. The neck pickup is really excellent and with the ability to play the bridge pickup either as a humbucker or a single coil, there are a lot of tones that can be played with this guitar. Fit and finish, except for the nut that needed replacing, was excellent. The edges of the frets were nice and smooth. A little word to the wise, I had a case for a short guitar, but it didn't fit. I bought a new Gator hard case and it fits perfectly. Honestly I couldn't be happier.

Simply expected more for the price. It is really a $200 guitar with a nice setup out of the box. Fender packaging was shoddy single wall cardboard box. Plays nice but may have some electronics issues to work out later - seems the volume pot is not quality with very little adjustment. Feel like I would have been as happy with the $229 mini-jazzmaster compared to the $649 duo sonic. I wanted the dual single coils and original duo sonic feel which is what I received so maybe I am just too picky. My ESP LTD EC-256 is a much more impressive piece of workmanship for $329.

The media could not be loaded. See my video. Black jacket, green hat. Peace.

I have had my Duo-Sonic HS for about a year and this guitar is so versatile! The neck pickup is amazing on cleans, the bridge humbuckers sound fantastic with distortion, and the option to split the humbuckers to single coil on the bridge gives the twangy "Fender" quack sound that sets this guitar apart. With the push-pull coil split option, this guitar has 5 different sound options. I gave it a 4 star for the only weakness that I have found with this guitar: the switch. It sucks, and why Fender continues to use this for the Duo-Sonics, I will never know.

I tried one in a store recently. The guitar is well built and feels great, the humbucker performs very well, and the neck is perfect, as you would expect from Fender, BUT...that single coil...! I'm not sure what kind of magic the folks at Fender did to cook up this pickup, but it sounds FANTASTIC! I generally don't play "clean" often, but this guitar could change that, it sounds that good! Save your pennies and get one of these, you won't be disappointed.