This unique guitar was designed online by members of the infamous Monkey Lord’s music-gear review forum.

The idea was to spend as much money as possible on non-replaceable components (i.e. the neck and body) then leave the rest to you. The stock Chinese pick-ups (although intended for replacement) sound great, with plenty of gain but enough depth to give you a full-bodied tone. The standout features of the ML-1 are by far the insanely heavy solid-mahogany body, which resonates forever and the incredibly playable ebony fingerboard. This guitar plays easily as well as an American made Fender Strat, and the coil tap affords you all sorts amazing of tonal possibilities.

For instance, I found that you could get a great Telecaster style sound on the neck pickup with a little jiggery-pokery. Jumbo frets are a nice extra feature, coupled with a thin c-contour neck they are a match made in heaven. This definitely seems to be more of a metal-head’s guitar on first impression, but I found it was a lot more flexible than that. Grover tuners insure great tuning stability and the bridge is a solid-as-hell Wilkinson Chrome WVPCR, which makes for a very comfortable play, in fact, comfort is the main word here. This guitar plays like an old friend. The only things I’d personally would of changed would have been the wacky reverse head-stock and the 25.5″ scale, which felt a bit of a stretch at times.

Conclusion:

Whack a couple of dimarzios/seymour duncans in here and get shredding. This is a steal for the money, and proves once more that if you build a guitar starting with a great piece of wood, you cant go far wrong.

Body Wood: Solid Mahogany

Body Colour/Finish: Thru Black Satin

Neck Wood: Maple with Thin Lacquer

Neck Profile: Thin ‘C’ Contour

Frets: Jumbo

Neck Join: Bolt On

Neck Plate: Engraved monkey face

Fingerboard: Ebony

Fingerboard Inlays: “Infinity” Logo on 12th Fret

Headstock: Reverse Tele Style

Nut: Bone

Scale: 25.5?

Pickups: Humbucker & two single coils

Electronics: Shadow kill-pot fitted under volume control, coil-tap under tone control

Machine Heads: Grover Rotomatic – 18:1 Ratio. BLACK

Bridge: Wilkinson Chrome WVPCR

Case: Monkey Lord padded gig bag included

Accessories: Guitar lead, allen keys, tremolo arm, two different gauges of solid mahogany tremolo blocks, black 3-ply pick guard & black screws

To see this guitar in our online shop and possibly even buy it click here