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Richwood RE-129 Reviews  4 / 5 based on 1 reviewsI bought my guitar at 121 Music in Leigh, Greater Manchester, England.
I needed a new guitar but don't have a lot of cash. I had previously looked at various budget instruments by Squier, Vintage and Stagg in lots of music stores. The Richwood models I tried seemed to be of a better build quality. I was looking for something with humbuckers as well so my choice was rather limited. In the end I paid £225 for the guitar and the dealer threw in a nice gig bag and two sets of strings.
This guitar is a solidly built black Les Paul Custom copy. It is quite heavy and has gold-plated hardware, two humbuckers, two vol and tone controls and a three-way selector switch.
The frets are fairly wide and the action is low - I have raised this very slightly.
So far so good.
The body is nato and the neck is nato with a sonokelin fingerboard. The neck is fixed and cannot be detached. The truss rod is accessed via a plate on the headstock - I have had no reason to need to adjust this. The guitar stays in tune very well.
The overall physical build quality is very good for the price - better than most instruments in the same price bracket. The finish is good quality and the contours of the body are smooth and regular.
Electronically, the guitar is fine - the pickups are fairly high output and are suited to rock very well, although you can get a nice jazz sound by backing off the tone and volume a tad - with appropriate effects/amp combinations the guitar would suit all styles of music.
The pickups are well balanced with no major difference in output between bridge and neck. There is no hum or other noise and the pickups aren't microphonic and so everything stays quiet when not being played - this aspect often lets down other budget instruments. There is no noise from the pots and these are effective across the whole of their range. There is a bit of a click from the selector switch - but this is a minor niggle and not too serious.
This guitar is a quality instrument and is better than many other brands in the same price bracket. I have played guitars in the past by Fender, Gibson and Yamaha (SG2000). Although the Richwood doesn't fall into the same league as these models, it is a serious competitor with "middle" league guitars by Epiphone and Yamaha and is better than all the other low-end models I tried.
It would make an excellent starter instrument and is also suitable for more experienced players. I would certainly use it for gigs. Harry rated this unit on 2005-01-07.
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