www.shortscale.org

[vojtasTS29]

Well, did this review on the jag-stang forum and i'm gonna do it here, too...

Fokus H is a czech brand with chineese factory. I think the guitar is the same one as the Harley Benton and Bach, excluding the headstock.

Oh well, never seen a review of one of theese, so i think i might aswell do one.This thing came to me three days ago. I kinda wanted a mustang type guitar for both my Nirvana cover act and my Alternative band.
When it came, it was setup pretty horribly, but what do you want for that amount of money (3400,- CZK) The string action was like 5mm high, but it came with such a thin strings, taht it didn't really matter(i think they were .8-.42s) I took some trusty Dean Markleys, 10-52's, that i really like and started setting it up. I had to shim the flush mounted neck, which fixed my action problems and now it
plays really nicely. I also had to redress two of the frets, which kept buzzing, but now they are fine.



THE NECK

The neck is really the nicest thing on this guitar. It has your usual nice fat exact copy of the CBS headstock, which for some reason didn't bring this czech brand under lawsuit, the profile is really nice too, almost like my friend's 1972 'stang. The fret edges came pretty nicely polished, but i will probably round them off even more the next time i change the strings. The rosewood board is slab type, the inlays are nice looking clay.
I absolutely love the neck.

THE BODY

The body feels really nice. It is contoured and painted with nice black poly. I will sooner or later go sonic blue nitro, but i kinda like it as it is new. The thickness is pretty much the correct mustang one, so i have no idea how much wood is under the trem...



The pearloid guard is not your cheap photo one, but a real nice 3D one which is extremely eye-catching i must say, and it even made most of my guitarist friends think i cut it myself from some super expensive pearloid. The guard protrudes to the part that should be metal, which i kinda like since when i install jazzmaster knobs, it will look like a child of a jazzmaster and a mustang

THE PICKUPS

Okay those are the nicest pickups i have ever seen in a chineese guitar. Beautiful dynamic range, compensated polepieces and not very hummy. The both on combination sounds very musically and kinda like a acoustic. The neck is your typical 80's grunge with some nice DS-1 or big Muff. It will get hotrailed tho, because it is becomming my main gigging axe.
There is only one problem, and that is those are jaguar switches, so it is only on-off and no inverted phase.

THE TREM and THE BRIDGE

Okay, this is the only shitty thing on here. It is the allparts jm tremolo, and it just feels like ####, i hardtailed the guitar tho, so i dont really care. It misses the trem lock.

The bridge is your classic tune-o-matic, which misses any height adjustment and just freesits on two posts. All the action adjustment is done by shimming the neck, which worked absolutely fine for me and didn't take me too long to do.

CONCLUSION
PROS:
-Super nice neck feel
-CBS headstock
-Beautiful guard
-Nice pickups for the price
-It is great for you know you're right type of songs, thanks to the jag/jm trem with the strings behind the bridge to do weird sounds
-looks stunning

CONS:
-Atrocious setup from the factory
-Non adjustable bridge
-Brutal dogshit of a trem
-Jaguar switches

All in all, i really love the guitar, and i am really happy with it. It is really inspirative, thanks to the jm behind the bridge area and the shortscale neck. It sounds really really nice and i will happily recommend it to everyone seeking this kind of a guitar who is not worried about doing some guitar techy stuff themselves

Along with my squier affinity tele gonna post a demo sooner or later, when i get home.

[Fakir Mustache]

welcome!

did you do that funny name on the headstock?
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[vojtasTS29]

Thanks for the welcome Yes, it used to say FokuSH, but i kinda rewrote the letters to FakeSTANG using a marker. I think it fits the purpose of the guitar way more

[vojtasTS29]

And this, i am looking for one of those, too. They are like the best guitar we made during communism. Kinda like Jazz bass meets jaguar thing. You can get them for like 20 dollars here, so that will probably be my next shortscale and offset at the same time. Ialso used to own URAL 450, but those have absolutey no value here...

[BearBoy]

That looks great. Are they any good?
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[vojtasTS29]

Theese jolana communist guitars, well... I like them, my science teacher has one of them in his office and i sometimes come to play it. The trem is kinda like the one on my fakestang... basically the shittest jag trem copy you can get. so good enough only to stick a washer between the plates and tighten the screws. There are two varinats of the necks, maple and painted black. Both have bound rosewood fingerboards, and they are really nice, but the black painted one is sticky as fuck and the finish is so thick it has like a mountain texture on it so it sticks even more. Those with the maple necks are really nice to play tho. The humbuckers are fine i guess(they are total shit, but this is kinda meant for punkrock, so who cares), but you can buy new pickguards with normal modern pickup routes like the P-90s or normal HBs. They came in sonic blue, fiesta red and black. I can kinda recommend it, but they will probably cost a lot more abroad, totally not worth it. They look really cool tho.

Ahh and i forgot... the tuneomatic bridge copy tilts the same way as a jag or jm bridge, which makes it even worse using the trem... Can be fixed the same duct-tape way tho.

[Addam]

Just looked on the Fokus website they're £88!
You could buy one to use the neck on a shortscale project.

[vojtasTS29]

Of course. That is one of the reasons i went for it. They have holiday sales with free shipping even... And for the price, the guitar is great. You can get shortscale mustang necks from other czech manufacturer, Bach for one third of the price.

[Fakir Mustache]

[vojtasTS29]

Yeah. The Disko(yes it is written with K in czech) Bass is a very cool RD copy, but those are really hard to come by even here. you can get a lot of IRIS and VIKOMT guitars which are basically thinline teles, either with both, or only neck pickup, they existed as shortscale basses, too. But the galaxis offset guitar/bass was kinda the best model. And yeah, most of the basses had broken trussrods right from the factory. The guitars were usually fine. :/

[Fakir Mustache]

I don't think the truss rod is broken on that one, it's just really tight and I had to shim the neck because the bridge wouldn't go lower.

In any case I found the Galaxis bass to play much nicer and it's short scale.

Hmm, I am reading those Fokus pages, supposedly Korean guitars, but it doesn't say what the H means. I like those Explorers.
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[vojtasTS29]

I think someone said that only the custom shop orders are MIK... The usual guitars you see on the website are just rebranded chineese copies from what i understand... I can call mr.Švehla and ask, but i don't wanna piss him off

[vojtasTS29]

Guys? Can anyone send me a Fender Musicmaster II( i prefer the one with big letters, but any will sufice) headstock decal that i can print onto decal paper? I have a majorly cool idea with faking a musicmaster II neck on the fakestang and basically making it a weird 90's conversion. When i refinish the body, i will drill holes and age the paint(i hope scale model techniques will work for that) like there used to be a musicmaster bridge and then someone in the 90's after he saw kurt made himself a bridge pickup and added some tremolo he found. Whatcha think?

[Fakir Mustache]

Musicmaster (I and II): slab, no contours
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[Noirie.]

Nice guitars man and welcome

[vojtasTS29]

Thanks noirie Well i dont really care about the contours to be honest. I am not trying to fool anyone on ebay, i just want a cool looking guitar So i guess Duo-Sonic or Musicmaster decals would be fine. I have a mustang decal here, but i think this would make more sense with the different trem placement. You know... This 90's dude might have contoured it or something. It might just be a really weird what if guitar.

[vojtasTS29]

Guys, does anybody know if anyone manufactures something, that looks like the Phase4 Univox Humbucker(the metal ring around the coils?) I just love the design, and with such a pickup, the guitar will have much more of that homemade mustang from the 90's mojo that i am going for...

[Johnny Alien]

I love the JM trem on Mustang look. I want to pick up one of those J. Reynolds that has the same thing. Probably from the same factory.

[vojtasTS29]

On the fokus i like the fact that it has the real deal headstock and not any weird awful shape Never heard of J. Reynolds guitars tho.

[vojtasTS29]

Thats kinda what i am gonna be going for. i just have to get the control plate. And since you cannot buy fender parts in my country, i will have to pay twice more that the actual cost for postal service from Thommann. YAY!