EART GW2 25.5" Headless Electric Guitar - Roasted Padauk Soild Body/5pc Maple Neck - Alnico-V Pickups, Stainless Frets

I own a dozen guitars or so and have played for 40 years. This guitar is an amazing value.The highlight is the neck. The fretwork is SUPERB. Smooth ends up and down all 24 frets on both sides (high E and low E). The compound radius of the fretboard makes bending and chording (even chords up above the 15th fret!) effortless. These features are becoming more common features on guitars, most recently with the smooth rolled fretboards of Sire guitars. But here's the thing... the backside and overall thickness of the neck also changes throughout. The combination of all of these factors make it the best playing neck on a guitar that I own.The neck joint feels tight. It is very strange to play a guitar that is so stripped down that resonates so well. It's loud and full sounding. The access to upper frets is excellent and all notes are easily reachable even for big hands like mine.The bridge is unique. Lots of ways to adjust strings. It's resonant as well, surprisingly, given all of it's moving parts. Once your strings are stretched, action is set and the guitar is tuned up... it doesn't go out of tune. It just doesn't.The body is very ergonomic. This is something that I don't require but enjoy. You can play it in a normal resting on your thigh position or in a upwards position where the headstock is pointing at the sky (Hello, Ice Cream Man solo stretched licks!). The body is cut to accommodate both positions.The pickups are ok. May be a little mushy but that is to be expected at this price point. I will say that they are far better than I expected but I will still replace them at some point, probably with a set of Duncans that will cost more than half of the price of this guitar.The knobs were very good but a bit too tall for me so I replaced them with some strat knobs and that worked. The output jack is out of the way and angled up (all guitars should be like this?) so that your chord will head towards the strap end which helps facilitate the ol' chord tuckeroo.I got the blue-USA finish and the poplar wood veneer looks and feels cool.The guitar is an amazing value. Excellent neck in every way. How is this guitar so resonant?Perfect couch guitar. Perfect travel guitar. Pickups are ok but easily replaced with a Duncan Hot Rodded Humbucker Set or whatever.Overall, at this price-point... ?Wow.

Incredible guitar!! Already used it at practice and it sings. Fantastic construction and sounds full and crisp. This is gonna be my main guitar. Ultra lightweight. Bridge scared me at first but easy to use and adjust. Stays in tune like a rock.

I’ve been playing now for 6 months. I started on a squire which was alright then bought this and woah it’s a pleasure to play! I also bought a travel guitar that cost $50 more than this and sounds like complete trash. I’ve tried out some Ibanez guitars that costs 4-5X more than this which were great and even a Gibson standard 60 which was super but for $350 I think this is a real nice guitar for a beginner like me and pretty light weight too. The depth of the sound quality isn’t as great as those I mentioned but it’s more than fine and it’s just pretty comfortable to play as well.

Update 2022:I am coming back to this review to update it after having spent significant time this year with the guitar EART is attempting to offer a cheaper alternative of.The W1 was my goto guitar ever since I bought it. I did replace the pickups with EMG HZ passives shortly after I wrote the below review. It was my daily guitar from November 2020 to July 2022. It's comfortable, easy to play, and holds tune better than most of my more expensive guitars. If you're on a budget and want a great headless guitar, get this one.That being said, in July of this year I pulled the trigger on a strandberg Bolden. Here are the key differences:1. The W1s bridge is more complex that the Boden's and harder to lock a tune into. I've changed strings on the Boden three times since I bought it and its just a breeze. Changing strings on the W1 is much more difficult.2. The Endur neck on the strandberg is the best feeling neck I've ever played. It's contoured to ensure your thumb is in a place at any spot on the neck where your fingers don't have to work too hard to hit any string in a 6 fret radius. While the W1s neck is thin and fast (its basically a Wizard ibanez neck) it can still grow uncomfortable after extended play. The strandberg doesn't have that problem.3. The strandberg is much, much lighter with nearly the same dimensions of the W1. I thought the W1 was light but the Boden is significantly lighter.4. The finish and wood quality are much better on the Boden. Duh, its a 2k guitar. It better be.5. Oddly enough, the fretwork, as uneven as the ends are, is MUCH MUCH better on the W1. My Boden came to me with fret sprout and sharp ends. Were I not familiar with dressing and shaping frets I would have had to go to a tech to fix it on a $2000 guitar. Absolutely inexcusable for a boutique guitar brand to have such horrendous fret work that a company offering cheaper Chinese guitars is doing better.6. The Boden sounds better out of box. It uses Fishman pickups so this is to be expected. You can aftermarket thr W1 to sound just as good but it'll cost quite a bit.All in all, while having the Boden has relagated the W1 to practice, secondary guitar, I still highly highly recommend the W1 if your budget doesn't include boutique Swedish guitars in its future.2020 Review:TL;DR: Great headless axe that has a high level of quality for the price you pay. If you want a headless guitar but don't want to spend $1200 to $3000 for a Kiesel or Strandberg, you can't really get a better alternative than this unless you make it yourself.Some quick background: I've been playing and buying guitars for the past 24 years. I've played in bands and as a solo artist. I have even built a few guitars in the past few years.Let's get this out of the way: yes, the body style is nearly 100% identical to the Strandberg Boden line of headless guitars. You're getting a Chinese-made knockoff of a Strandberg. But even by knockoff standards, this is high quality work. They're definitely aiming to compete with boutique rock/metal guitar makers. And they're mostly successful with the W1 model.The guitar arrived three days after I bought it and was packed well. No damage to the outer or inner boxes. Lots of tape so bring a cutting tool. In the box besides the guitar: you're provided two hex keys and a steel lever for the wheel-based truss rod adjuster (just above the neck pickup). The hex keys are for the locking nut at the top of the neck and the smaller "octave" adjuster nuts that control the height and back/forward position of the individual bridge saddles.The quality of the guitar's materials, while certainly not boutique level, is identical to name-brand Indonesian and Korean made mass produced guitars. Not North American factory standard, but not incredibly far off, either.The neck is a maple five piece with two African Rosewood skunk stripes, and it's lightly matte-finished, so if you like a slick neck or a completely naked neck, look elsewhere. The body is African Rosewood with an open pore matte finish and from what I can tell, it's a two piece. On the top of the body is a gnarled and dyed maple veneer that has been shaven down very thin. So thin in fact that my veneer has what appears to be knots and pock marks that, due to the style of finish, were not filled in and are very obvious when you run your fingers over them. You can feel the grain on every bit of wood save the neck's maple pieces on this guitar. Aesthetically I like it, but if you're wanting a smooth feeling guitar, or at least a guitar with some shine, you'll be disappointed.Let's talk hardware. I'll get the pickups out of the way: they are muddy, inarticulate, and provide a very thin, cold sound. They are very lacking in the bass and mids area. When over-driven, it's a total mud show. They lose a LOT of clarity. Of course this is to be expected thanks to the price you're paying. I have spent more on a set of pickups than this entire guitar costs. So if you're looking to do anything but cleans, I'd go ahead and plan to replace the pickups if I were you. I'll be doing that in a few weeks. On another note, the pickups were set very, very low into the body from the factory. I had to raise them quite a bit to get a decent, balanced volume.Next up is the bridge, a point of contention from other reviewers. From my own experience, I had zero trouble figuring it all out. There's a video on youtube but I didn't bother with that. The bridge on the W1 is fixed, and the strings are fed to it ball-to-end, starting at the locking nut and ending with the cut off end of the string being fed through a hole in the small metal wheel behind the string's saddle that tightens and holds the string. You use a magnetic winding handle (that mounts to the side of the bridge) that fits inside the thumbscrew at the back of the bridge to turn the wheel and bring the string to tension. Not too difficult once you look everything over. I had the stock strings off and changed in about ten minutes.Some string change advice: feed all the strings through the locking nut, lock the nut down to hold them in place, and then pull each string individually taught over the bridge in line with their corresponding saddle. Cut the string at the very back of the bridge. This will leave just enough string to pull to tension and prevent over-winding at the tuning wheel in the bridge.Out of the box, with my preferred thicker gauge strings, the bridge only needed slight intonation adjustment and needed only a couple of saddles lowered for my preferred string height. I've had it for three weeks now and it's held C standard since the day I got it. I'd say that's pretty decent tune holding for a guitar that costs less than most bottom shelf models from the big manufacturers.The pots are standard fare. They turn smooth and appear to be wired well (no crackling or inconsistent volume). There is a bit more than usual interference, and from what I can tell the wiring cavity is not shielded. I'll be fixing that when I put in new pickups. The selector switch is a three-way Telecaster style switch and I have to say it's pretty top quality. It has a smooth motion and a satisfying click that isn't picked up by the pickups (looking at you compact 3-way toggle switches). The knobs are... well they're cheap. Replace them if you want. They don't bother me.How about that neck? Well, out of the box I had no issues. I read some reviewers had to get rid of back-bow using the truss rod but I didn't have any. It was nice and flat. The fretboard IS finished which is... a choice for sure. This is the first fretboard I've ever had that's finished so the verdict is still out. The fret work though? Insane for this price. They are highly polished medium-jumbos with rounded edges that are filed back to just a few millimeters away from the edge of the fretboard. They appear to have a high polish to them. The neck is thin and very fast to play and it has a palm-stop at the top of the neck under the locking nut so you have a natural place to call "home" for your hand if you're finishing a run or slide. The only complaint i have about the neck is the frets aren't installed evenly. Some are longer on the ends than others and make a pretty icky sight when you stare down the neck to check relief. The fret ends are very uneven. There's a spot near my second fret where the top string can slide right off the fretboard on a bend. Thankfully I don't bend much that low on the fretboard. The neck pocket is angled and rounded so it's super comfy when you're at the higher frets. The top horn on the body is slightly stretched taller than most top horns and rests against your chest when you're playing between your legs. Love it!I've been playing this guitar exclusively over the past three weeks, getting used to it, making sure it's set how I want it. It's so lightweight that I can play it for extended periods of time without fatigue. Due to its Boden-copy body shape, I can play it in anyway I want: right leg, left leg, between legs (classical style) and it's always comfortable. I can easily reach any fret I need to in any playing position. The body has a belly cut and a curved forearm rest, and is about the thickness of an Ibanez RG (1 and 2/3").All in all I feel this was a great purchase. Sure I'm going to have to replace the pickups but I usually do that with any guitar I buy anyway. The W1 looks great and plays great. Throw in better electronics and this is easily a five star guitar, especially considering the price!