Peavey Reactor AX: REVIEW
Cypher
Subject: Peavey Reactor AX: REVIEW
Guitar: Peavey Reactor AX (Blonde)
Price Paid: $375 without case
-First Impressions-
The Reactor AX series from Peavey are some stunning looking guitars.
Mine is "semi-transparent" blonde with a brown shell pickguard. This
guitar is also available in Sunburst w/ brown pickguard and solid
colors w/ pearloid pickguard. The blonde and sunburst models have a
solid ash body and the solid colors are made of alder. The neck is
maple with a rosewood fretboard and the body is Tele-Style with two
"DB2" pickups - Peavey's humbucking Dual-Blade pickup. The hardware is
chrome and the guitar uses sealed tuners which look identical to the
ones on the Fender American Standard Tele. (Probably made in
the same factory)
-Pickups / Sound-
Overall, the pickups sound pretty nice. Be forewarned, however, that
they are VERY hot. These pickups don't produce any noticeable noise.
The bridge pickup is a classic hot Tele sound and the neck pickup is
darker sounding. These pickups are so hot that they almost sound
active. My only gripe about these pickups is that they lack
"character". The sound is decent but not fantastic.
-Controls-
This guitar falls short in the controls area. The 3-way toggle switch
is VERY cheap and puts out static while switching pickups. The Volume
and Tone controls are misaligned and don't turn evenly. They rotate
like a severely warped record. This doesn't seem to hinder the
functionality of the knobs, however.
-Feel/Materials-
This guitar uses very high quality wood for the body, neck, and
fingerboard. Further, the guitar plays nice, doesn't buzz and has
incredibly fast action. However, this wasn't the case when I first
bought the guitar. The action was way too high from the factory and
the guitar was horribly set up. My guitar tech worked with the guitar
for quite a while to make it play as good as it does now.
-Quality-
In my opinion, Peavey really falls short in the quality area. Why?
About a year after I bought it, the guitar started making a "popping"
noise. This was immediately identified as a grounding problem. When I
pulled the bridge off, I realized that the ground wire was NOT
soldered to the bridge!!! Peavey had simply placed a little piece of
masking tape over the grounding wire and it had come loose. Folks,
there is NO EXCUSE for using masking tape in the final construction of
a guitar. This is VERY bad Q.C. I am extremely disappointed in Peavey
after discovering this flaw. Also, there is no excuse for the cheap
toggle switch or mis-aligned control knobs. Another gripe I have is
that the neck is set too far from the neck joint - in other words, you
can stick a quarter between the neck joint and the neck.
-Overall-
This guitar wasn't "that" expensive to begin with. Therefore, I can
overlook some things that would be unacceptable in higher-priced
guitars. However, this scares me about Peavey's quality lately. This
is SUPPOSED to be Peavey's top of the line Tele-Copy. Knowing what I
know about guitars now, I would have NEVER bought this guitar. Why?
I've seen cheaper Tele-copy's that were built better. This proves that
US made guitars aren't always the quality that people think they are.
Thumbs down, Peavey!
You can read this and my other guitar reviews at:
http://www.geocities.com/SunsetStrip/alley/1091/
-Cypher