Review of the Cort G 260 OPN Electric guitar. Where to buy it?

It’s an absolute stunner and plays and feels like a much more expensive machine.

Firstly though , I would like to make a point of detailing my experience when purchasing from Thomann. It’s my 1st time using them and I have to say I am incredibly impressed with their service and particularly their aftersales service. The guitar was very well packed and arrived promptly but picked up a small ding in transit. I emailed them and sent a few pictures and they came back to me straight away and resolved the issue to my satisfaction.( A special thanks to Vladimir in International Customer Care for his help with this). The best customer service that I have received in a long time.
As for the guitar;

The Pros: Really well made with quality materials. Very well assembled. There are no gaps. The intonation was spot on out of the box. The fretboard is absolutely beautiful. The wood grain shows subtly through the frets and the frets are well set. The abalone dot inlays look great and are perfectly level too. The neck is smooth with a matt finish and feels much nicer than a varnished/gloss neck. The machine heads are very good. I believe the previous generation came with locking tuners but this doesn’t. I may upgrade at some stage in the future but it’s no issue.

The Graf-Tech nut (not mentioned in the specs so an added bonus!) really works and keeps the guitar in tune, especially when using the tremolo. The Wilkinson VS-50 is an excellent system but does take some setting up (The guitar strings that came with it were 9’s and I changed them to 10’s and had to add the 3rd spring and make a few adjustment to the spring tension to get the bridge to float correctly) But once you get it set up correctly it is fantastic. The tremolo / whammy bar is not a screw in but you can tighten it with an allen key, another plus.

The pickups are just brilliant and I am stunned by the tones that I am getting from them! The bridge humbucker is clear and bright and had a lovely bit of grit to the sound. The Neck and middle pickups are sublime and the coil split is great if you want that country twang. The body of the guitar is open pore and the sustain is excellent for a guitar with a floating bridge. The tone is lovely and warm and you can feel the vibration of the note through the body of the guitar. This is very noticeable when compared to my old tobacco burst strat. As it’s open pore I decided to stain the wood a little to extenuate the beautiful natural grain. I’m really happy with the result. I am in two minds whether to wax seal it for protection but I don’t want to influence the tone so haven’t done it yet. (Wish I could post a pic) The volume and tone control is excellent. Very good potentiometers with a lot of sweep and control. I have more expensive guitars with poorer control/potentiometers. However, I would like a stiffer feel to the control knobs though. A little more resistance would give that feeling of quality. I may look at upgrading this too.

The Cons: The only negatives I can give are that the strings supplied were corroded and cheap and had to be immediately replaced. The tone and volume knobs are not loose but I would prefer a stiffer feeling dial. The whammy bar when fully inserted must touch internally as I have noticed an earth sounding issue when it is in fully. Once again a small issue that a slight adjustment/modification will fix. The Ash is beautiful but very soft so easy to scratch and dent. Worth noting if thinking about using it for gigging. A prefect studio guitar though.

In summary: For the asking price you wont get a better studio guitar than this in my opinion. It is excellent value for money. If you have never played an Ash body guitar, you don’t know what you are missing! You can tell that this came out of the factory that produces branded guitars with much bigger price tags. I have to say the G260 OPN has really surpassed all of my expectations. For the price point I cant recommend it highly enough.

First, shipping from Thomann to the US left a lot to be desired. The guitar was in a standard box from Cort, which was loosely packed in a larger box leaving the inner box to bounce around on its way across the ocean. This resulted in a small chip in the nut and one of the tuners getting banged/bent so it no longer turned. Fortunately the nut chip was in the back corner and did not impact playability, and Thomann offered $35 to compensate for that and cover part of the cost of new tuners.

(Reading these reviews, looks like I should have held out for more!).

The tuners were the weakest part of the guitar, so I just replaced them all. Part # TK-7591-010 from AllParts are drop in replacements and are pretty good 18:1 locking tuners.

Otherwise the guitar is really excellent for the price. Set up out of the box was perfect for the factory strings and only required minor tweaks to the spring tension and low E intonation after replacing with 10-46s.

Frets are well finished.

The body is very resonant and the fretboard/neck feel great.

Every pickup combination sounds excellent to my ears.

This guitar is replacing my 90s Mexican Strat and it definitely feels like an upgrade. Highly recommended if you are looking for a strat-type instrument. I do wish Thomann would upgrade their packaging, but they did compensate me slightly and you can always return the guitar if needed.