Quality Would you consider this product to be made well? How dependable? Yes. It was manufactured in Korea and I have had great luck with guitars built there. It's been good to me so far. Reliability How has it stood up over time? I haven't had it long enough to be able to judge its reliability. So far so good. Overall Your general opinion of this product. This is a great guitar for more than just thrash. Being able to split the 89 in the neck opens another sound up to you. It looks great and has a familiar feel to its neck, not too skinny and not too fat. Also it's perfect for the Exodus or Gary Holt fanboy...like me! Haha! Playability and Feel How does it feel, Heavy, Fast, Chunky? How was the neck? Are the controls easy to get to while playing? The neck is great. It isn't super skinny and it fills out my hand well. It's weight, 1 being light and 10 being heavy, sits at about a 6 or 7. You may feel differently though. I prefer a heavier guitar. There are only 2 controls. A volume with push/pull to split the neck pickup, and a 3 way toggle. They're right next to the bridge and are very easy to get to. Tone Bright and snappy? Dark and smooth? Were the pickups hot, mellow, thick, thin? The pickups, being EMG's, are hot as expected. But you can pull more than metal tones out of this. Split the neck and roll off the volume and you can get a very cool single coil sound. All in all though the guitar leans toward the bright side of things. Tweak your amp if it's too much for you. Finish How did the stain or paint job look? The paint is great. None more black! Haha! But not a blemish or anything and it's extremely smooth. The red binding goes very well with the black. Action How was the action out of the box? I had a little bit of buzz, due to temp changes and humidity I'm sure. A slight turn of the truss rod and I was good to go. Nice and low.