The GS 330S is fairly plain and non-descript, with a satin finished cedar top, nato back and sides, no inlays, and a simple rosette, this guitar is no frills. Takamine put there money where it counted for a budget guitar like this.

The neck had a nice feel, fairly similar to a Japanese-made Martin I have. Very adequate.

I think the biggest contributor to the sound of this guitar is the satin finish cedar top. In this price range guitarmakers usually use lower quality and a thick glossy finish is applied to "dress it up" but Takamine has put a very light finish on their cedar top. First of all, cedar is a bit more mellower sounding than spruce and applying such a thin finish allows the top to reverberate more freely, giving a more "open" sound thats not stiff It also equates to more volume, which definitely is the case here as the Takamine projects quite well and respond very well to picking dynamics and fingerpicking.
The GS can handle everything from folk strumming, to single note blues runs.
My only complaint was that I thought it was a bit "thin" sounding, probably due to nato being used for the back and sides instead of more traditional mahogany, which is darker in tone. Selecting the right strings could help compensate, and the guitar was fairly balanced across the spectrum so my perceived lack of "thump" from this model doesn't mean it was shrill or harsh. It was actually quite sweet sounding overall.

- In What Country was it made? (USA, Japan, Mexico, France...)
I believe this is Canadian and possibly part made in the USA but i'm not sure.
Godin is Canadian, though.

- How many frets, Pickup Type and Configuration?
From memory i'd say it's a 22 with jumbo's.

- What type of Bridge(Floyd, Wilkinson...)?
Not sure but there is no tremolo and the strings go vertically through the body for added sustain. This bridge has an integral piezo pickup for the electro-acoustic sound (dedicated output) and a MIDI sensor inside too! Simply amazing!

- What are the setting controls (volume, tone, pickup selector position)?
An amazing array of controls on this magic piece of 'wood'...it's just full of electronics!
Listen up:
= volume & tone for the electric mics, with push-pull on the tone that carves out the mids for a gentler sound, very useful on rhythm. Electric output.
= electro-acoustic preamp with 3 band EQ and volume. This uses a 9V battery, fairly easy to replace but you need a screwdriver. Dedicated output.
= Midi volume and dedicated output. You'd plug this into a MIDI guitar expander, such as the Roland GR series, for instance.

En extra switch lets you toggle what is sent to one of the outputs, so you can mix the sounds inside the guitar!
Another switch let's you change MIDI presets!

- Does the neck have a nice feel?
The neck is fine! Just the right width for me...easy to play.

- Easy access to the top notes (last frets)?
Yep!

- Is it's design ergonomic(in terms of the shape, weight...)?
It's a bit heavy after a while, and real heavy to carry around, but...well...what did you expect? ;-) Probably no worse than a Les Paul...

- Can one easily get a nice sound?...
Hell yeah!

You can do pretty much anything you like with this guitar, although i would suppose a metal-head would prefer a Jackson or an Ibanez...

You can get jazzy sounds on the right amp, that electro-acoustic feel, or various electric sounds. Put it through a TC G-Force and you'll have an even wider palette to play with...it's a very versatile guitar.

I love that jazzy warm sound you get on a tube amp with the neck mic on and the tone half way.
But this is great too on a british 70's tube amp with distortion on 5 or 7...

The Epiphone Hummingbird HS is made in China. It has a 25.5" scale with frets. It has mahogany sides and back with a solid spruce top, and a rosewood fingerboard. It features pretty standard chrome hardware, split paralellogram fingerboard inlays, and of course the obligatory brilliant sunburst finish that Epiphone calls "Heritage Cherry Sunburtst" along with funky decorative pickguard. I was quite impressed of the quality of the finish on a 300.00 guitar.

The neck had a decent feel, nothing spectacular. At least this guitar is built to mimic the more expensive Gidson model so they already had neck specs to copy. Unfortunately, the action on the guitar I sampled was terrible, I mean absolutely dreadful. Anything beyond the 5th fret was increasingly difficult to fret, and playing anything beyond the 12th fret was almost impossible due to the high action.

Even for a 300.00 guitar, I was not at all impressed with the sound of this guitar. It had a "harsh" tonal quality that made me wonder "why?" I mean, its got a solid spruce top, a fairly large cavity to resonate, but you are left with a shrill bottomless tone.

This is a stereo preamp (with adjustable input gain on the front) with all the main guitar effects except a proper distortion. The flangers & phasers are lovely and the delays & reverbs are wonderful.

It's digital, of course, with 8 processors, 1 per effects module. So, unlike with other gear, you don't have quality loss when piling up effects, the quality remains optimal throughout.

2 high impedance asymmetric 6.35mm jacks, 2 line level TRS outs on similar jacks.
SPDIF in & out on coax.

24 bit 44.1 khz conversion, but not sure the digital I/O's can convey 24 bit signals...someone told be that they were 20 bit...(check that, i'm not sure).

There's MIDI in & out i believe, and you can easily set up a MIDI pedal board such as the Roland FC-200...the G-Force has a ready made template for it all set up.

For the price, i think they could have made this a 96 khz machine and/or have AES/EBU I/O's in addition to the SPDIF coax...it's just not a pro machine without AES/EBU!

Extremely easy to use, all is very very intuitive. You can see it wasn't designed like a TR-505 or an MC-303! :-D

Editing & saving presets is real easy.

Great manual, that is even nicely made...not just some cheap photocopy look-alike, this is nicely bound & all...a high-class manual for a high-class piece of gear. ;-)

The effects are nice but you can be tempted to overdo it...because they are so nice!
Then again, you'll have that problem with any effects processor...it's just that the others don't sound so good! ;p

The reverbs are amazing, of course, and you can use this for vocals or anything you like if you come in digital.
This is a very good effects processor.

The dynamics are good but not perfect: i still prefer going direct into a good amp, but if you accept that the sound is just different then you can enjoy it for what it is. It's still good, it's just not 100% the same...maybe only 95%? Anyway, incomparable with any Boss or Roland or Digitech effects i've tried...and i have tried a lot of those. True, the price isn't comaparable either! ;-p

The Epiphone AJ200SCE has a 25.5" scale, with mahogany neck and sides, and solid spruce top. It features an Epiphone-made Shadow pickup and a cutaway for ease in playing higher on the fret-board. The solid spruce top and pickup suprised me to have both of these features on a guitar that retails under $300.00.

I didn't particularly enjoy playing this guitar. It did not inspire my playing in the slightest, and I had no problem putting it down after a short bit of playing.

The neck had a nice feel to it, a good thickness and nice-feeling radius for string-bending and single-note runs as well as chording. The cutaway allows great access to the upper fretboard when you desire it.
The tone and overall sound did not initially impress me.

While this guitar boasts a feel and ease-of-play that is rare for this low of a price range, its sound did not impress me in the slightest. It sounded muffled and lacking the volume and projection I would expect of a full-size guitar such as this, although new strings could have revived it a bit. The sound was balanced; not harsh in mids or shrill in the highs, or boomy or muddy in the low end. But it was lacking in dymanics, responding very coldly to my finger picking and varying pick attack.

I used this 20" Ping Ride from the A Custom line for a short while.
I'm not typically a fan of ping rides or dry rides since I've come to like (and expect) a good wash underneath the ever present "ping" of a ride cymbal. So I was pleasantly suprised with this cymbal. It is fairly "wet" for a ping ride, so you get a nice low to moderate "wash" or "shimmer" underneath the ping. I've compared this cymbal side-by-side with Zildjian's K Custom Ping Ride, and the K is markedly drier and has significantly less capability to produce a noticeable "wash" underneath the ping than the A Custom will produce when you induce it by playing harder and further out from the bell. In other words, the wash is there when you want it.

I had no problem getting excellent stick definition playing complicated patterns anywhere "in the field" of the cymbal while still getting a gentle wash and sustain underneath it, which pleases me and my playing style greatly.

My only dislike is the small size of the bell, although you can still get plenty of "ping" almost anywhere on the cymbal.

I think this cymbal is versatile enough for use in multiple styles. Its well suited for heavy rock music since it has a good density and its well-definied "ping" would do a good job of "cutting through". It could also be adequate for modern jazz or fusion style music since it has a fairly "wet" sound. I would also reccomend checking this cymbal out side-by-side with the 22" version to see if the larger, more expenzive one is better for you.

Unlike my unfavorable review of the 16" Fast Crash from this series; the A Customs- I really like the A Custom's 18" Fast Crash.
What I like most about the A Custom line-up is their versatile sound, being very modern sounding but traditional enough for more than just rock. The 18" Fast Crash is no exception, as it has a very shimmery modern sound, and is mellow enough to be utilized in a wide variety of gigs. Its a good cymbal for guys who play in different types of bands and need a good "go-to" cymbal for different styles.
The 18" Fast Crash has a great sustain thats not wimpy (unlike the 16" version) so it can be played like crash/ride. It has the density to stand up to it and not flop around like a fish. And, like the name implies; the crash is "fast" so its sounds more punchy and punctuated than most 18" crashes. All of these characteristics blend together perfectly, in my opinion, and this cymbal is explosive and punctuated, dark, modern and shimmery, and with great sustain, and its still versatile enough to play this in a modern rock band all the way down to jazz. Its not as complex as some players might demand, but it does have great musicality and sensitivity to pull off different styles well.
This is one of my favorite crashes ever, other than a few that Paiste has to offer. Its not bad for the price considering the use you would get out of it. It wouldnt replace my standard 18" crash in my setup, but it would pair up with it as a replacement for my 16". Thats how "fast" of a crash it is, you can replace your 16" with it for a fuller sound but not give up the punctuation or explosiveness you expect from a smaller crash!

You will love this cymbal.

I did not use this cymbal long, as it just didn't jive with my tastes and expectations. It might for you, though. The 16" Fast Crash is pretty typical and in line with the rest of the A Custom series, but this particular cymbal is just not of use to how I play and what I prefer in a crash cymbal.

What I liked about this cymbal is its shimmery blast of sound that hits you in milliseconds of hitting the cymbal. They didn't call it a Fast Crash for nothing.

What I did NOT like about it was that I found it a bit thin and anemic sounding for a 16" cymbal. It had the sustain of a 16" or larger, but the wimpiness of a 14" or 15" crash. It lacked fullness. Even its sustain was just the tone lingering, and not a full reverberation of the cymbal. It is probably due to the thin-ness of the cymbal, its fairly lightweight. It seems like to achieve the "fast" crash that this cymbal is named for, it had to lose any fullness or deep sustain that it could have otherwise had had it been a more substantial cymbal. Its a trade-off for sure, and a trade-off I'd rather not make.

So in my opinion, I would never use this cymbal in a rock band, even though much of the A Custom line-up is perfect for everything from mellow rock to aggressive rock music. I would maybe check out the 14" or 15" Fast Crashes as a more splashy cymbal in the future but the 16" has no place on my kit. I could reccomend trying out this cymbal to anyone who plays more modern jazz or fusion type playing. They might appreciate the mellow sustain and punctuated "fast" crash sound of this cymbal.