Ortega RRG30E-DD

I've been really into slide playing recently, and I started wondering what playing around with a resonator in a proper swamp blues guitar feels and sounds like, so I decided to take the plunge with this despite the not-quite-entry-level price tag, thinking that I'll possibly return it, unless I strum the first lick and it just makes my hair stand on end and I can't put it down for hours. Because just look at it.. It looks like it's actually made out of Louisiana. Well, I got it home, unpacked it, and that's where the dream started falling apart.

The model I got, while very pretty, wasn't really as distressed as I would have liked. It looked green, unless you knew what to look for. Very pretty paint job and finish, but not the same vibe. Then I went to tune it and I'll just list the issues I found chronologically, because they really don't need my insights: tuners were completely dry, after lubrication, they all varied considerably in turn, the nut is soft, clingy plastic and every string pinged constantly, making a stable tuning very difficult, the strings were rough, the action was all over the place due to the nut cut, but basically way too high, intonation was shocking, the ebony bridge has 2 mm of ebony where it contacts the strings and then continues with some light, soft wood (although it sounded pretty twangy and nice), the pickup was set so low, I had every volume on full on a tube amp and basically couldn't hear the notes, the tone knob generated an extremely loud high pitched trill when close to full, no matter if you play or not, and it didn't seem to capture any of the resonator echo, and last and worst, the neck was crooked. I tried adjusting the truss rod, string tension, even different tunings about 15 times, but the truth of it was that the fretboard on the body, above the 12th fret and the neck fretboard.. formed an angle. The 12th fret was much higher relative to the others, even with a slack truss rod, and that caused almost every string to be completely muted on the 11th fret. Not even buzzing. And that's probably ok if you only want to drop it in open G, only slide on and let it buzz for that swampy tone, but all that time, I kept seeing that 430 euro withdrawl in the bank account, and I really think that for that kind of money, you shouldn't have to pick between style and substance. Eventually, I got it to a place where it was sort of in between, and the resonator sounds very nice, the harmonics are great, particularly with a ceramic slide. Mellow glass and the mellow semi-ebony bridge made for a muddy combination. But still, I've spent many happy days with it, learning bluegrass licks, playing swampy slide and just looking at it. All in all, a very pretty, decently sounding piece of kit, but nowhere near its price point. For 200e, maybe even 250, I would have taken it for a refret and bought a new nut and would have loved it evermore, but for this price, I'll keep looking. Worth trying if it's in your budget, maybe I just had bad luck, but definitely don't commit.