When buying a Guitar there is lots of things to consider, there's many different makes and models to go at. With some starting at only £30 and going all the way up to £1000 its hard to choose which guitar to buy if you're a beginner.

I've been playing for about 10 years and I'm still surprised at how many beginner guitars are out there that are not very good quality. This search for quality drew me toward the Peavey Raptor - its a decent brand name and a reasonable price.

 

I decided to buy the Peavey Raptor Junior since I wanted a guitar to Mod which didn't cost to much, and which had some half decent parts from a respected brand. The guitar arrived packed very well in a standard guitar box, and came with a Cable and the Allen keys for the Truss Rod and the Saddles. 

 When it came to plugging the guitar in I couldn't get any sound out of it at all. "Bad cable maybe ?" I thought and decided to change to one of my more reliable (and better quality) guitar cables.

Having a quick go i noticed that the guitar had not been setup very well, it doesn't seem like they set the guitar up at all in the factory, and although the action was not bad, the string buzz was horrendous and i found it near impossible to tune the guitar with the strings provided. 

I think its possible the guitar had been in storage for a long time, although its impossible to tell as there is no date sticker on the guitar - the only thing i could find was a sticker that said it has been "quality tested" which doesn't seem to have been done very thoroughly!

For a guitar that costs 60 pounds the quality is pretty good. It has a very nice Maple neck and a Rosewood Fret board that unfortunately has a slight imperfection at the body end where it hasn't been rounded off and finished properly (its pretty rough).

The Body seems to be solid wood from looking at the pickup cavity and the rear electronics cavity, this is a nice surprise for such a cheap guitar as they are usually made of plywood sheets glued together. The paint job is also very good, it's very bright and vibrant, and I cant see a single smudge or error.

There's a decent chrome hard tail bridge (no tremolo/whammy bar), so it wont keep going out of tune like other tremolo equipped guitars in this price range. Unfortunately the saddles let the bridge down quite a bit as they are made of some very cheap chromed tinny metal which creates a lot of string buzz.

The pickup looks like a stock Chinese (the guitar is made in China BTW) Humbucker and does not sound that bad, it is not to my taste though as it seems very "hair metal", when the Seymour Duncan pickup I ordered arrives I will be swapping it out so its not of much concern to me. It's a decent pickup for a beginner guitar though, better than my first guitar by miles.

The Tuners are decent quality modern Die Cast Fender style ones which makes it pretty good for staying in tune as they don't seem to budge when the guitar is being played.

The Volume and Tone knobs are not very nice, they are made of plastic and feel very cheap. I ordered some round chrome telecaster ones from AxesRus to try and give it a nicer feel.

 The current knobs may be plastic to reduce interference when the knobs are touched but i have never

 experienced this since most of the metal knobs i use have plastic inside which insulates them from the actual Potentiometer.

When I got some new strings for the guitar I changed over the saddles and strung the guitar, then setup the action by changing the saddle height. I noticed there was still some fret buzz and put this down to the Truss rod. I found it pretty much impossible to move the truss rod with the supplied Allen key so i could not setup the guitar to the best possible action, I'm sure I could do it if I used a better tool or if it was setup professionally by a Luthier / Technician.

 

 

The Peavey Raptor Junior is a decent beginners guitar, but it would definitely need a bit of setting up before it was ready to be played. If you were after a beginners guitar like the Raptor I would suggest buying it from a local music store where you can try it out and have them set it up for you with new strings, Some online stores will setup guitars for you but they are becoming few and far between.

Build Quality 5/10

Sound 7/10

Parts Quality 5/10

Value For Money 7/10

Peavey Raptor Junior : £59.99

Postage : £10.00

Bought From gak.co.uk

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Seymour Duncan Pearly Gates Pickup : $50.00 (£25)

Postage : $11.00 (£5.50)

Bought from Gretschrocks @ Ebay

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Ernie Ball Stainless Regular Slinky Guitar Strings : £4.10

Postage : £0.90

Bought from Guitar Strings 'n' things @ Ebay

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6 x Modern Milled Steel Saddles : £7.00

2 x Brushed Chrome Tele Domed Knobs : £5.40

Bought From AxesRus.com

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Bronze Series Original Gig Bag : £12.99

Postage : £3.99

Bought from Piano Covers Online Ltd @ ebay

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Total = £134.87