The TL;DR: Great for the money.
Unboxing the guitar, I was pleasantly surprised to find it didn't show any visual flaws. For the money, that really surprised me. It included a hand-written note from CNZ, which is a friendly plus. I ran my fingers down both edges of the fretboard to check for sprout, and found none at all. So far, really good. I sited down the neck and saw a little more relief than I prefer, so I gave the truss rod 2 eighth turns. The first turn showed me it was not engaged at all, and the second turn made the neck as straight as I like. The bridge was set pretty high, and the saddles very low so the screws were sticking out quite a lot. I lowered the bridge all the way so I could raise the saddles to a somewhat better compromise. I left the action lower than I need to check out the frets and tuned it. I could not detect a single high fret, so I am now impressed. And it is already intonated well. At this price point I would have expected both to need help.
So finally I plug it in. The tone sweep is only useful for about 40% of its travel, but it works, and the volume sweep is usful through the whole range. The pickup selector feels a bit cheap (wiggly), but works well. I play a bit, and adjust the pickup heights to please my ears. They really don't sound bad at all, they're alright. The bridge pickup on its own is too thin for my tastes, but the other two positions sound good to me. The neck feels 60's thin, and appears to have no finish at all, but feels very smooth. The radius is very flat - the website says 14" and that looks accurate but I don't have gauges for that.
I put the trem arm in, and the first thing I notice is the arm stays where you put it. That's a surprise for cheap JM/Jag style trems. But it needs loosening, as it won't do any dive at all. After many screw turns, it has good range, but I notice something else. The tremolo arm collet is not quite in the right place - it actually rubs the B string and bends the string where they contact. You can even hear the B string ring out a high tone when you move the trem, so that's not good. I will have to think about what I can do about that. Worst case, I will block it and play it as a hardtail. I'll look for alternatives because I think a seafoam green guitar should do surf, and you can't do surf without a trem. So placement of the trem was not a detail they paid enough attention to in the factory.
One review I read mentioned the body was smaller than a Fender. I couldn't tell that by playing the guitar, but measuring, they're right. It is just a little smaller, but to me that is not a playing issue. I imagine it's slight changes to the design to avoid copyright infringement, and it's fine. Bottom line, the only thing bugging me is the trem collet rubbing the B string. The rest of the guitar is great for the money. It looks like a fantastic mod platform, and I imagine replacing the electronics would be worth it. I might shim the neck just so I can raise the saddles more and increase the break angle behind them. They also sent a very decent cable with the guitar because I ordered direct from them instead of Reverb or Amazon.
Cons:
Sloppily cut nut, but proper slot depths.
Bad tremolo mounting angle: B string rubs trem arm collet and rings out.
Too dark to be seafoam green but still a good color.
