Washburn WI66 Pro Guitar Review
The Washburn WI66 Pro is a great guitar for a wide range of players from intermediate to advanced. The reason for this is its low price but high functionality and quality. The guitar comes standard with an all mahogany body and neck, a nice wood choice to get a deep and rich tone. If you had to compare this guitar to any other, it would probably have to be the Les Paul by Gibson, however, ignoring name prestige, the Washburn may have the Gibson beat in just about every way.
The WI66 Pro is made out of the same wood as the Gibson, but the Pro has a thinner and lighter body that make for more comfortable playing experience. Some may say that this gives the Gibson an advantage in sound from having more wood on the guitar, but the Wasburn still has a nice weight and size to it, and any difference is probably unnoticeable.
The paint job on most of the Washburns is also surprisingly good. These guitars are made in Asia, which facilitates their low price, but the quality is usually very high, and the quilted paint job of the model this review is based on is very nice, probably as good as most custom guitars or high end Gibson models.
The tone controls of the WI66 Pro are set up in a lightly different manner than most guitars of this general style. Instead of two volume and two tone controls, the Washburn has what they call voice control contour knobs, which supposedly should enable the guitar to have a single coil sound with certain settings. This system works pretty well at getting that kind of single coil sound, but it is no match for the real thing, and its hard to tell if a coil tapping system works better in general.
The Washburn also has an improved tuning system that seems to make a more even distribution of tuning inequalities that is natural to the guitar. Combine this with the high quality Seymour Duncan pickups that come on the instrument and you really have a great sounding guitar.
The Washburn WI66 Pro is a great instrument for someone looking for professional quality at a very decent price. What you get is something reviling or even better than some of the name brand guitars that cost twice as much, so its possible for a lot more players to have the kind of quality they deserve.
January 12 2010 09:48 am | Guitar Equipment