Agile Interceptor

My first seven string, an el cheapo Agile guitar. After reading numerous positive reviews about the Agile brand of guitars I decided to take the plunge and order one, even though I had to pay for the shipping costs to the Netherlands.

It arrives:




After taking the guitar out of the box:






After admiring my new guitar I plugged it in and tuned up. After doing that I found out the guitar was horribly setup. Intonation was way off and the action way too low. No problem there, I can setup guitars on my own just fine.

I decided to put on thicker strings so obviously the floyd was all out of place, so I removed the plate from the trem cavity to hook up a fourth spring. That just looks horrible, the finishing is really rough (no smooth sanded wood), the 2 outer springs were attached to the middle of the metal thingy because they would touch the sides of the cavity when attached to the outer sides of the metal thingy. On top of that the middle spring wasn't attached well so when I did that it ALSO touched the wood of the cavity. Sloppy!! Fortunately the guitar's made from a very soft wood (basswood?) so sanding the cavity only took about 15 minutes or so. It's now smooth and the springs of the trem work like they should without touching the wood.

Sanded cavity:


After this little drawback I intonated the guitar and was ready to testdrive it! It sounds good, very good actually! Surprised by the stock pickups, nice touch you can switch between single coils and humbuckers. The single coils sound great with clean sounds. The longer scale gives the lower strings a sense of clarity I never heard before when tuning down my normal scale guitars to B. That, and the higher tension of the strings make it a steady B instead of a B that starts on C when you hit it and lowers to a B

The longer scale takes some time to get really used to I guess. When sitting down and concentrating it's alright but I took it to band rehearsal last night and it's really a bit harder when moving around and standing. But nothing you can't get used to.

Overal verdict so far:
Even though the finishing and the setup was crap, I'm still very happy with it. I'm glad there wasn't a flaw I couldn't fix and I was a bit prepared for the cavity sanding because I read several reports on this forum about the very same thing. The guitar plays very smoothly, nice neck width. Pickups sound great, won't swap them for some time I think. And of course, the guitar looks great!

Off to record some samples with my new beast!