Over the past two decades, advances in the quality of guitar building from China has been nothing short of astounding, but one result of that is that domestic markets have been flooded with new guitar lines at crazy prices. Plenty of those off-brand, no-name instruments are indeed bottom-of-the-barrel products with sloppy construction, cheap parts, lousy setups, etc. But imagine if serious guitar fanatics found a way to tap into affordable manufacturing and quality construction, and built a line of guitars targeting serious guitar players at affordable prices?
| Category | Value | Rating |
| Features | 20% |  |
| Usability | 25% | |
| Sound | 25% |  |
| Documentation & Support | 10% |  |
| Price | 20% | |
| OVERALL RATING = 3.7 Stars, which earns it a WIHO Award! 3.6 stars or better: Outstanding, WIHO Award 3 stars or better: Worth considering 2 stars or better: Suited to specific needs 1 star or less: Not recommended |
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Enter SBS Guitars, designed by renowned, Gold record selling guitarist and producer, Steve Brown (Trixter, Def Leppard (touring), Tokyo Motor Fist), in partnership with the team at music retailer, GuitarFetish.com. Steve put together a line of guitars targeting fans of hard rock, hair metal, and classic shred, with all of the features such players desire, and priced at a point that is embarrassingly low. We mean, really embarrassing.
With SBS guitars selling for under $400 (without case), our typical reader will instantly think “budget guitar” or “beginner’s guitar,” but these guitars are not meant for those players. They feature roasted maple necks, genuine licensed Floy Rose tremolo bridges, and crazy details in their wiring like coil taps and treble bleed circuits! If this were a $1,500 guitar, our review thoughts and ratings would be the same. The fact that SBS guitars are so affordable is hard to comprehend when you total up the cost of the parts and detailed features. We don’t think there’s a better value on a shred-style guitar from any of the other more well-known names.
Focusing on the review at hand, the VS200 we reviewed plays great! We were so impressed that we think many of you will want to grab an SBS guitar just to have a cheap beater guitar, but then it will become one of your main go-to instruments since it feels and sounds so good. Or, to paraphrase some classic Trixter… damn good.
Features
The VS200 is a Jazzmaster/Jaguar style, offset, solidbody electric guitar. Ours came in a distressed, white finish that looked as good as any relic job we’ve encountered other than premium, custom shop one-offs. The body wood is alder (three pieces).
The next bit to admire was the fabulous, roasted maple, 25.5” scale, 22-fret neck neck. It features a 20” fingerboard radius and nicely rounded fretboard edges, medium jumbo, nickel frets that were dressed perfectly, and a pinwheel-style truss rod wheel accessible at the body. The neck itself sports a satin finish.
You can’t miss the genuine Floyd Rose double locking tremolo bridge—with a screw-in arm. It was custom designed for these guitars and features a steel baseplate and steel saddles. There are standard die cast, non-locking tuners at the headstock.
The VS200 is a dual-humbucker guitar, with plenty of great details surrounding the electronics. It starts with a pair of Steve Brown designed Arena Power Plus pickups featuring Alnico V overwound magnets connected to a three-way pickup selector. The bridge pickup has 14.5K resistance while the neck pickup has 12.4K. The pickups utilize the GuitarFetish.com’s Kwikplug system, which enables you to swap pre-wired pickups easily without any soldering. (See their website for more details.)
Underneath the push/pull tone knob is a coil split for generating single-coil tones. And the volume control features a treble bleed circuit, which preserves your tone high end when you roll off the volume. Details like this are truly unheard of in guitars at this price point, and offer as much versatility as a custom shop instrument costing tenfold the price.
Usability & Sound
Playability of the VS200 was excellent. The guitar was very well balanced and sat on our lap in the studio without any neck dive. The satin finished neck made it a breeze to play—not to mention the wonderfully low action, and there were no sharp fret ends or flaws you typically see at this price point. The setup was great out of the box and required no additional touch ups.
Documentation and Product Support
We have to cut SBS a little bit of slack being a new product line that isn’t exactly a company, per se, but fortunately this is an instrument whose target customer will already know how to maintain. New, younger players however would benefit from some documentation regarding general maintenance of the guitar and the Floyd Rose tremolo system.
Price
The SBS VS200 Offset Relic (MSRP $849) sells for $419 street, and was on sale for only $329 at the time of this writing. A variety of different colored, hardshell cases, are available for just $89 with instrument purchase. No matter the price, this guitar delivers exceptional value and does not feel or sound like a cheap guitar in any way. We’re going to grab a couple for ourselves.
Contact Information
SBS Guitars and GuitarFetish.com
www.guitarfetish.com
