Westcreek Revenge Guitar,West Creek Guitars

Incredible deal! At $219, with the $40 off coupon, this guitar outplays some of my much more expensive LTD, Jackson, and Dean guitars. I really like the shape of this V and the reverse headstock looks killer. The reverse silverburst paint looks great and the paint lines are clean around the binding and headstock and the rosewood fretboard is very dark and well polished. It does indeed have a bone nut, they just painted it black, you can see the white of the bone coming through at the corners and the nut slots on my copy are cut perfect. The frets do appear to be stainless steel, comparing them to my nickel fretted guitars, and are nicely polished and level with no buzzing or dead notes. I recommend changing the strings immediately, as the ones that come on the guitar(9-42) are not very good and will leave black on your fingers, I put Dunlop heavy cores on mine(10-48) and they are much better for this 24.75 scale length. The stock pickups sound ok, but I relaced the bridge one with a Seymour Duncan Nazgul, much better with crushing tone, I plan on putting a Sentient in the neck position. The bridge and tailpiece are of decent quality and the tuners are actually really good, so no upgrade needed. The guitar is light, at about 6lbs even, and it balances pretty well with no neck dive. As others have noted, the jack is on the inside of the lower fin, I play standing up so it doesn't bother me, but it could be uncomfortable sitting down without a 90 degree cable. I will also add, that I didn't have the grounding issues or microphonic pickups on my copy, the wiring was good. These guitars are great for beginners that want to learn guitar without breaking the bank, or experienced players that may want to upgrade the pickups and still come out way ahead budget wise. I thought I would add a review for the Cerberus CB-3, since I got it right after I wrote the review for the silver one. To start off, it looks amazing, the pictures I took don't do it justice! The red they used for the fade is a deep candy apple red metallic and looks exactly like the promo picks, in hand. The CB-3 differs from the original Cerberus in the following ways: it comes with a genuine Floyd Rose Special with locking nut, it has 24 frets, the neck is a 25.5" scale length, and it weighs a bit more at closer to 7 lbs. The neck appears to be similar thickness and shape to the hardtail version and the bridge pickup sounds a bit better than the one that came with the silver version. Both guitars needed to have a slight truss rod adjustment, as the necks had too little relief, easily fixed by loosening the truss rod a half turn. The CB-3 came set up with .10-.46 strings and played very well once the truss rod was adjusted. The action was set at 1.75mm on the bass side and 1.5mm on the treble from the factory. They decided to mount the Floyd slightly above the body instead of recessing it into the cavity, because of this the neck has a slight angle to the body as compared alot of other guitars with Floyds where the neck is parallel to the top of the body. Mounting the Floyd in this way doesn't seem to affect playability, but I thought I would mention it. The Floyd stays in tune once the strings and the tension springs are broken in. On the back the CB-3 has the same control cavity as the silver one and the plate for the Floyd is not recessed into the body, but it does have slots the plate for adjusting the spring tension. Overall, this is another great release from Westcreek. The CB-3 looks and plays like a much more expensive guitar and feels solid, a really awesome value. I ebonized the fretboard with stain and I got a Floyd Rose hardware upgrade kit with the red anodized stainless steel screws, locks, and retainers. I plan on upgrading the pickups later to Seymour Duncan, though the stock ones don't sound bad.

Incredible deal! At $219, with the $40 off coupon, this guitar outplays some of my much more expensive LTD, Jackson, and Dean guitars. I really like the shape of this V and the reverse headstock looks killer. The reverse silverburst paint looks great and the paint lines are clean around the binding and headstock and the rosewood fretboard is very dark and well polished. It does indeed have a bone nut, they just painted it black, you can see the white of the bone coming through at the corners and the nut slots on my copy are cut perfect. The frets do appear to be stainless steel, comparing them to my nickel fretted guitars, and are nicely polished and level with no buzzing or dead notes. I recommend changing the strings immediately, as the ones that come on the guitar(9-42) are not very good and will leave black on your fingers, I put Dunlop heavy cores on mine(10-48) and they are much better for this 24.75 scale length. The stock pickups sound ok, but I relaced the bridge one with a Seymour Duncan Nazgul, much better with crushing tone, I plan on putting a Sentient in the neck position. The bridge and tailpiece are of decent quality and the tuners are actually really good, so no upgrade needed. The guitar is light, at about 6lbs even, and it balances pretty well with no neck dive. As others have noted, the jack is on the inside of the lower fin, I play standing up so it doesn't bother me, but it could be uncomfortable sitting down without a 90 degree cable. I will also add, that I didn't have the grounding issues or microphonic pickups on my copy, the wiring was good. These guitars are great for beginners that want to learn guitar without breaking the bank, or experienced players that may want to upgrade the pickups and still come out way ahead budget wise. I thought I would add a review for the Cerberus CB-3, since I got it right after I wrote the review for the silver one. To start off, it looks amazing, the pictures I took don't do it justice! The red they used for the fade is a deep candy apple red metallic and looks exactly like the promo picks, in hand. The CB-3 differs from the original Cerberus in the following ways: it comes with a genuine Floyd Rose Special with locking nut, it has 24 frets, the neck is a 25.5" scale length, and it weighs a bit more at closer to 7 lbs. The neck appears to be similar thickness and shape to the hardtail version and the bridge pickup sounds a bit better than the one that came with the silver version. Both guitars needed to have a slight truss rod adjustment, as the necks had too little relief, easily fixed by loosening the truss rod a half turn. The CB-3 came set up with .10-.46 strings and played very well once the truss rod was adjusted. The action was set at 1.75mm on the bass side and 1.5mm on the treble from the factory. They decided to mount the Floyd slightly above the body instead of recessing it into the cavity, because of this the neck has a slight angle to the body as compared alot of other guitars with Floyds where the neck is parallel to the top of the body. Mounting the Floyd in this way doesn't seem to affect playability, but I thought I would mention it. The Floyd stays in tune once the strings and the tension springs are broken in. On the back the CB-3 has the same control cavity as the silver one and the plate for the Floyd is not recessed into the body, but it does have slots the plate for adjusting the spring tension. Overall, this is another great release from Westcreek. The CB-3 looks and plays like a much more expensive guitar and feels solid, a really awesome value. I ebonized the fretboard with stain and I got a Floyd Rose hardware upgrade kit with the red anodized stainless steel screws, locks, and retainers. I plan on upgrading the pickups later to Seymour Duncan, though the stock ones don't sound bad.

As an owner of several other "cheap" guitars (e.g., Xaviere, Glarry, Firefly) I took a chance on the WestCreek Revenge (red), fully expecting it to require a complete set-up and to have some minor fit & finish issues, maybe even require some downstream mods/upgrades to get it to punch above its weight.So I was very pleasantly surprised when the Revenge arrived this afternoon in (nearly) flawless condition, was playable right out of the box, and sounded absolutely fantastic.Appearance - positives:+ The red is deeper and more nuanced than the Amazon photos; in some lighting it is very vibrant and in other lighting it is almost maroon. Really comes alive, especially with the flame top.+ The sides, back, and neck are not black as they appear on screen, but more of a deep burgundy. A nice surprise!+ The stain, lacquer and binding are flawless all-around. The flame top is subtle but adds plenty of color depth.+ The glued neck joint is perfectly blended with the body as if the entire thing were carved out of one solid block of wood.+ The stainless frets are already polished with smooth, rounded ends - just as described. Extremely comfortable without any filing needed.+ The mother-of-pearl fret marker inlays are vibrant with plenty of 3-dimensional depth.+ The fretboard itself appears to be high quality wood; the coloration is consistent and there is no wood filler.+ The headstock logo appears to be mother-of-pearl inlay. Higher-end than what I expected; based on the Amazon photos I thought it would be a white decal. So another nice surprise.Appearance - negatives:- The highest fret marker inlay is *ever* so slightly crooked. You can only see it because the strings make vertical reference lines; most would probably not even notice. Im picky about such things but even I can live with it.- The humbucker pickups in the Amazon photos have chrome covers. The one I received came with uncovered black pickups. Which Im actually happy about because I wouldve preferred that look anyway. But it's in the negative list because it's still an assembly discrepancy; if someone is ordering this guitar hoping for the chrome pickups that are pictured, they would likely be disappointed.- All 3 of the control knobs are marked "volume" when in fact there should be 2 volume (top and middle) and 1 marked "tone" (bottom). The knob functions properly as a tone knob so the pots are correct; it's just the wrong tophat. I submitted a customer service request this afternoon to the seller to either send me a replacement tophat OR send me a partial refund that would cover buying new tophats myself. Again, it works right, so not a big deal.Functional - positives:+ As mentioned above, the guitar required minimal setup. I watched a YouTube review (apparently from a prior run of Revenge models in late '22) which said the nut needed cut way down, the truss rod needed big adjustments, the bridge was too high, and the intonation was way off. Well in my case, at least, none of that turned out to be a problem. The nut is cut perfectly; strings are low with no buzz. Neck relief is right where I like it (flat with no relief), and bridge height was also perfect. Just needs *slight* intonation adjustments on 2 strings. Honestly, I've never bought or worked on a guitar that was this close to being dialed in right out of the box.+ Pots seem to ramp up as they should. Saw a prior Amazon reviewer who had bad luck with a volume knob jumping straight up to full volume but this wasnt an issue for me.+ The factory tuners are tight and don't seem to have a lot of slop in the mechanism. We'll see how well they hold tune but so far, so good.+ This guitar sounds amazing! The sound of these (black, uncovered) pickups matches the appearance of this guitar, i.e., full-bodied & aggressive. Crisp & vintage clean tones, monster crunch at high gain, with sustain for *days.*EDIT: Another + The pickup specs aren't listed, however, according to my multimeter they measure just shy of 10k at the neck and slightly below 14k at the bridge. So they're fairly hot and provide plenty of crunch, as you might want/expect with this style of guitar.Functional - negatives:- The strings suck. But factory strings always do, so I'm not sure this really counts as a minus. Just replace them with your favorite strings at your earliest opportunity.- The fretboard looks pretty dried out, so it's in bad need of oil at the first string change. But that's pretty much standard operating procedure unless you have a maple fretboard.- The high-E tuner knob is really hard to turn. So much that I was worried about breaking it when I initially tuned up the guitar. It seemed to loosen up a tiny bit after that, but still pretty stiff. Not a big deal, but might be a reason to upgrade the tuners at a later date.Overall, I am extremely pleased with this guitar. Especially at a sub-$250 price point! I realize that other user experiences seem to be mixed, so quality control may still be luck of the draw. But I'm pleasantly surprised and impressed with the one I received. Even if it had come needing a setup it would be a steal. This guitar looks and sounds as good - and perhaps better - than other "Explorer" and "Snakebite" type guitars costing >10x as much that I've played around with. If you're in the market for this style of guitar - and maybe tired of waiting for other more popular "cheap" guitar brands to release their next batch (as I did) - the Revenge is an excellent value.EDIT: I contacted WestCreek via Amazon customer service link about the volume/tone knob and they issued me a $10 credit within 12 hrs. Enough to cover the cost of a set of 4 identical replacement tophats, which I can easily change out myself.Bumping my review from 4 stars to 5, as this was really the only negative above that bothered me.