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Washburn N3
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Washburn N3 -- A budget version of Nuno Bettencourt's N4 -- Alder body, Maple neck with Stephens Extended Cutaway, rosewood fretboard, Licensed Floyd Rose Pro tremolo.
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Searched Washburn N3 in Reviews
Washburn N3 -- you take the good and take the bad 
| Sound |
This guitar sounds pretty good, and actually gets a bit of Nuno's sound from the "Waiting for the Punchline" era (when I play "Hip Today," it makes me feel like a big man :D ). Sustain is good. The tone itself is influenced by its alder body, and by the Washburn pickups -- no Bill Lawrence models on this one. The pickups are hard-mounted, which makes for a bit of a visual difference, and the lack of a finish really helps the guitar to vibrate nicely.
The controls are simple" a single 3-position pickup selector, and a single push-pull volume pot with a coil split to allow for single coil tap. This makes it a versatile guitar, but I tend to stay with the humbuckers.
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| Action, Fit, & Finish |
The guitar needed a setup, as it was transported to my home in winter in a guitar box. It has been fine since purchase, with very little need to work on it, save for the tremolo system, which I will cover in the next section.
The neck itself is a sweetie. the fretboard is wider than I am used to, but works well for me. The frets are jumbos, but not really jumbo. It could stand some higher frets. It holds a low action nicely, although lately I have started to see a little buzz from the high E if fretted at the first fret. Still, the playability is excellent. I would love for it to have had the ebony fretboard like the N4 has though -- the extra snap would be great.
The Grover tuners work very well.
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| Reliability & Durability |
This is where things start to get a little bad. The whammy bar immediately started to give me trouble -- it simply wouldn't stay in tune when used, and I tried every trick I know. I ended up pulling the bridge off the guitar only to discover that there was a large burr on the knife edge. I took it in to the local shop, and he was able to clean it up, but the bar still comes back to level just a little out of tune.
One of the locking nut screws stripped immediately as well. It was very evident that these were extremely cheap pieces. A trip to the local guitar shop solved this problem with new hardened steel pieces, which even made a tiny difference to the sustain of the guitar. These are small pieces, but they add up.
As well, the finish has started to come off the trem posts
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| Customer Support |
I was informed by Washburn after buying the product from the States, and having it shipped to my home in Canada, that I would need to ship it back to the States for warranty work. The repairs to the tremolo cost less than the shipping would have been.
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| Liked about it |
The playability
The look
The tone
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| Didn't like |
The whammy bar problems
some cheap materials
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| Overall satisfaction: |
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3.0 |
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internal use: spec97 spec503
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