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2018 FGN BOS-M

 

Pickups: Stock FGN

Neck: Maple

Body: Basswood

Nut Material: Plastic

Bridge: FGN 

Colour: Transparent Blue

Country of Origin: Japan

Weight: ?

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Yet another eBay steal, it pays to be diligent! 

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Base model FGN, which is a hard-tailed HSS strat. This is my first HSS guitar....and as people who set up these guitars regularly know, there is a sort of compromise that has to be reached when setting up this particular pickup scheme. The single coils and humbucker share a master volume AND tone in this case. The pot value that is conducive to singles will be too dark for humbuckers, and vice versa. 

 

FGN have chosen to use 500k pots for both volume and tone. This results in a very bright sounding guitar...even slightly so on the humbucker. Strangely the volume pot is linear, while the tone pot is log. This is something I definitely noticed even before opening up the guitar and inspecting the pots (but I had just assumed was due to the pot brand rather than the type of pot). 

 

The tone cap that they used has a value of 0.022uF. This is a not a very high value but with the tone completely rolled off, I still feel it is way too dark. 

 

There's also a mini switch that is used to split the humbucker. I really dislike mini switches so this will have to be swapped out at some point. 

 

The pickups are in-house pickups. I would assume that these are very cheaply made (they had to have cut costs somewhere for the budget base model) BUT I actually like the sound of the single coils. Albeit they do sound bright and the transients are VERY spiky. They don't sound as smooth as my other pickups but the base tone is actually decent (to me). I will likely change the electronics and see how the pickups react to that, and if I'm still not happy I'll end up changing the pickups too. 

 

The volume difference between the humbucker and singles is manageable, in my opinion. There is a difference but not a great one. 

 

Another area where they have cut costs is in the body cavity shielding. I have seen higher end FGN guitars with conductive paint in the body cavities to shield from noise. This model does not have that, but it does have shielding in the form of foil on the pickguard. This can be easily rectified, I'll probably install some copper shielding when I get a chance to do so.

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Good neck feel, which sits in the middle ground between vintage and modern, in my opinion. For a player that is used to more vintage necks it doesn't fully satisfy, but it doesn't disappoint either. I imagine it would be the same for a player on the other end of the spectrum. 

 

Being made out of basswood, the guitar is LIGHT. Very very light in fact, but I didn't think that the balance was off. There is definitely a different balance to a "normal" Strat though, especially given there is no steel tremolo block to weigh down the already super light basswood body. I might be discouraged to put locking tuners on it for that reason, but in truth I am pretty happy with the current tuners. 

 

The tone is bright and lively. You can get good strat tones out of it and very decent "notched" tones (pos 2 and 4). The humbucker on a Strat is a revelation for me...I love it. I do appreciate the ability to split the humbucker (critical for that notched position tone). It CAN get a little ice picky, especially the transients. I feel it is an extremely dynamic set of pickups, but not in a very pleasing way. It can probably be dialled out with EQ and compression, I'm not sure. 

 

The tone knob as it stands is only useful between 5 and 8. Anything below that is too dark and muffled, anything above that is typically too ice picky. 

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For me, the mods I will be targeting are (chronologically ordered):

  • Change pots to 300k pots - middle ground between 250k and 500k...in an attempt to tame the brightness of the guitar

  • Have one of the pots be push/push, to replace the mini switch

  • Change the volume pot to be logarithmic

  • Change the value of the pot to be 0.015uF, to make the tone pot range more usable. 

  • Add shielding to body cavities, shielded wire to input jack

  • IF the tone and transients is still too bright for my liking, change the steel saddles to brass saddles

  • IF still not completely happy, change pickups

In truth I will almost certainly get to the end of that list whether or not I'm happy with it, because I would love to hear this guitar with different pickups.

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Jobs/Upgrades to be done:

Pickups

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Upgrades done:

Electronics (Multiple changes)

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