VITAL STATISTICS

Body: Neck-Through Design with alder wings

Neck: Rosewood-on-maple

Scale: 25 1/2" (24 Frets)

Nut Width: 1 5/8"

Tuners: Gotoh SG die-cast

Hardware: Original Floyd Rose double-locking trem

Pickups: Seymour Duncan Jazz (neck) and JB humbuckers

Conrols: Volume and tone, 3-way pickup selector, push/pull coil-cut

Weight: 8 lbs

The Baretta-II Pro is a perfect example of how much bang for the buck today's solids deliver. With its sculpted curves and ultra-smooth heel, the Baretta feels like an expensive, '80s-era shred machine. Add U.S.-made Duncan pickups and a German-made Floyd, and you have to wonder how they can do it for 600 bucks. The Baretta's slim-taper, elliptical neck is girthy enough for larger hands, and the low action and smooth frets make it an easy guitar to play.

The Baretta delivers stout, AC/DC-style crunch and sinister lead tones, but it's no one-trick metal machine. The sweet-sounding neck pickup offers blues-approved creaminess when played through lower-gain amps. Switching to single-coil mode acctivates the front coils of both pickups, yielding warm, nicely detailed rhythm tomes and plenty of snap from the bridge setting.

PROS:

A high-quality, tough-sounding rock guitar for a ridiculously low price.

CONS:

Sloppy paint shielding in control cavity. Tuning drifts under hard trem workouts.