Post by Tony Ravenscroft on Mar 13, 2021 10:39:01 GMT -6
{The following was originally posted mid-2016. I'm surprised the images have stayed available for so long -- if you like them, save them. As well, Cozart has disappeared from Amazon, and become very thin on Reverb and elsewhere.}
I'm going to avoid mentioning THAT NAME because they're known to be crankier than FMIC.
And if anyone can direct me to an online pricelist/catalogue for Cozart, I'd appreciate it! At least, tell me the official model name of this one!!
Though I don't have any photos yet, here's that for which I paid $139.50 + $25 --
Shopping for something else entirely, this showed up on a "might also be interested" pane, being ratcheted up a few dollars at a time by The Typical Auction Morons. I figured, "meh -- set-neck, looks pretty, betcha I can resell it quick for a few bucks," so I bid like $160. After a few feeble attempts & a failed last-second snipe, they'd all skulked away.
Now, let me put forward that I have never particularly liked ANY of The Originals that I have played, much less at premium prices. Even the best 400x bass in my hands was an Electra copy. Aside from curiosity about the mysterious Knob 5, & whether stereo out really means much, it's just never been a brand with much to offer me. The body shapes are sorta cool, but The Originals aren't losing a sale to me.
(Y'know, if a guitar company REALLY wants to control its brand, what they should do is create a lease-only program: like with a car, you pay cash up front, then so much per month. If any of their instruments appears without a document trail, then it was stolen from the company, including unauthorized copies. Everyone involved is immediately liable for fines, jail time, or both, PLUS direct damage to credit rating -- who wants to get stuck with a high-rate mortgage for buying a Red China clone on Alibaba?)
Firstly, I wasn't paying attention to the auction listing, so the box also holds a middling-decent gig bag & strap. The big surprise, though, is the second-tier pickguard riser, just like on Those Guitars originals; in a bag taped inside the box, with screws & all.
(Another seller has one at $80 + $25 with six days to go. I don't see mention of the pickguard riser OR the gig bag, though.)
The photos DO NOT do this guitar justice. Basically a 360 neck on a 330 (square edge) body. Though a one-piece neck, the heel is exactly as you'd hope.
Downsides? Surely... none insurmountable. The unbound soundhole edge is a little rough so I'm thinking of some cautious sanding. The strings sit high in the nut (though not unplayable). The frets need polishing. Aside from the logo, there's no identifying marks whatever.
SOME UPSIDES
It's light, well-balanced, with VERY nice unplugged tone.
The covered minibuckers are rather good, if hardly a threat to DiMarzio. I'm curious if the gnarly "authentic" pickups would fit right in.
I like the wire tailpiece MUCH better than the originals' sheetmetal.
The neck is unbound -- something I'd much rather have than half-arsed binding! -- & the fretboard is natural rather than that weird gloss/semigloss of the originals.
Note that the headstock shape, trussrod cover, & logo placement are pointedly NOT like the original -- chalk it up to intelligence. The tuners could readily be replaced by medium Rotos, but respond like typical basic Gotoh or Schaller so no good reason to throw 'em out.
Only played briefly, but no sharp fret-ends noted.
Though not aggressive, the veneer does have a nice flame to it.
DOWNSIDE:
Here's a stumper: name one low-tier off-brand model of guitar.
Now, look it up on your fave search-engine, adding the word USED.
You get dozens, right? if not hundreds?
There's almost ZERO hits for cozart used, almost all at Reverb.com. Even there, I find a mere TEN instruments, two of which are squeezboxes.
(In this instance, ignore the hits for Kansas University quarterback Montell Cozart...!)
I've known the brand name for at least four years, yet there don't seem to be ANY traction in the Western Hemisphere. I think Cozart might eventually become the 201x-era Tokai, if not Matsumoku. Don't overlook interesting oddities like the double-cut electric resonator for <$250. The white single-cut is even cheaper. Or the 12-string teardrop for $295 or less. They also have double-six lap steels <$250, & SG-style 6/12 with HSC at <$500. Seems that Cozart MIGHT have a few grains of Common Sense that could readily earn them a niche in the Frugal market.
CRITICAL EVALUATION
Everything OOB is good-to-great. String height, intonation, neck curve, pickup height... even the rosewood looks like it might've been oiled at some distant time, unlike the sun-baked look most imports have.
The weak point of too many electrics is the TOM-ripoff bridge, a truly generic style that is too narrow to allow a proper degree of slug travel. Because of this, minuscule variants in manufacturing sometimes add up in one direction or the other, & it's not unusual that one or two strings can't be properly intonated. In this case, it's the G (which seems to be most common); though many players would never notice at all, even if they spend a lot of time above fret 12. I may file-work the vee-cut in the saddle to see if I can't get that last .025mm, else I'd need to pull the slug & grind the face a little. Or, heck, I try to install a Schaller "Nashville" bridge I've heard as an upgrade.
As I said, the nut slots could be dropped a little, but the height doesn't make it unplayable at all, just more stiff than necessary. And the frets are nice but could benefit from a polishing (maybe a StewMac "eraser" block).
The neck is middling-slim, not the half-round log found in some imports, yet NOT trying to be a Wizard II or any such nonsense. Oh, & the inlays are rather nice, with some MOP-like colors in direct light.
The chamber is actually smaller than I would've expected, given the guitar's weight & the rather nice tone that comes out of the catseye. That middle bar is big, yet the guitar sounds more like a true semi-hollow archtop, maybe from the interaction of the rout-outs for soundhole AND controls AND pickups. Unintentional, perhaps, but it WORKS.
It's the headstock build that tells me this model might not become an heirloom. The neck is one piece, all the way down -- no joint, before OR after the nut. From this, I'm guessing the moderate headstock tilt is a steam-bend. There's no "volute" bump whatever, & of course a chunk of wood went away for trussrod access, which weakens that joint further... or what we might call the Gibson Problem. Certainly a design that would benefit from the Washburn-style heel-end adjustment wheel!!
But, really, I can't see getting too exercised:
(a) it's an awfully goshdarn GOOD under-$500 guitar, not a Big Name gewgaw to keep in a climate-controlled vault
(b) though plywood, it's STILL a semihollow, & bashing it around like a cheap Teleclone is Not A Good Idea no matter how you tell it
(c) ditto for if you slap the guitar down hard, cased or not -- the death of many an LP/SG; make sure the case at least ATTEMPTS to give proper head/neck support, & don't throw it (duh!!)
Someone told me the pickguard is actually more like what's on a 340 or 370, because the lower guard stops rihgt at the pickups & doesn't go between. Well, heck, I know fair NOTHING about The Original Brand, so maybe. But then I see two 360s on Google Images, where one extends between the pickups & the other doesn't, so there ya go.
I bring this up because there's so little leeway to make little "personalizing" tweaks to anything that ain't a Stratoclone. Pickguards are generally expensive... & white. At least Pickguardian has a dozen options (albeit $70/set!!). WD Music Products claims to -- they show 61 (!!) sets for the 4003 bass, $40-$70 -- but they also say to download the 2014 catalogue, so I remain skeptical.
FWIW: still no luck whatEVer at locating solid info on Cozart. Well, okay, not STRICTLY true, but amazingly tenuous in this internet age.
There are the Cozart guitar kits, but it seems like a mere guess that THIS Cozart is the same as THAT Cozart.
cozartguitars.angelfire.com/
And there's an eBay seller, RAS COZART MUSIC USA, that carries the kits AND some models readily identifiable as Cozart-branded instruments (along with some rather random-seeming musical stuff), but doesn't consistently use "Cozart" in auction headings.
stores.ebay.com/RAS-COZART-MUSIC-USA?rmvSB=true
Thus far, when I'm able to track down owners of the Catseye (gotta call it something), almost ALL the complaints are "the nut slots aren't deep enough," usually balanced by glowing praise of the overall workmanship.
I'm going to avoid mentioning THAT NAME because they're known to be crankier than FMIC.
And if anyone can direct me to an online pricelist/catalogue for Cozart, I'd appreciate it! At least, tell me the official model name of this one!!
Though I don't have any photos yet, here's that for which I paid $139.50 + $25 --
Shopping for something else entirely, this showed up on a "might also be interested" pane, being ratcheted up a few dollars at a time by The Typical Auction Morons. I figured, "meh -- set-neck, looks pretty, betcha I can resell it quick for a few bucks," so I bid like $160. After a few feeble attempts & a failed last-second snipe, they'd all skulked away.
Now, let me put forward that I have never particularly liked ANY of The Originals that I have played, much less at premium prices. Even the best 400x bass in my hands was an Electra copy. Aside from curiosity about the mysterious Knob 5, & whether stereo out really means much, it's just never been a brand with much to offer me. The body shapes are sorta cool, but The Originals aren't losing a sale to me.
(Y'know, if a guitar company REALLY wants to control its brand, what they should do is create a lease-only program: like with a car, you pay cash up front, then so much per month. If any of their instruments appears without a document trail, then it was stolen from the company, including unauthorized copies. Everyone involved is immediately liable for fines, jail time, or both, PLUS direct damage to credit rating -- who wants to get stuck with a high-rate mortgage for buying a Red China clone on Alibaba?)
Firstly, I wasn't paying attention to the auction listing, so the box also holds a middling-decent gig bag & strap. The big surprise, though, is the second-tier pickguard riser, just like on Those Guitars originals; in a bag taped inside the box, with screws & all.
(Another seller has one at $80 + $25 with six days to go. I don't see mention of the pickguard riser OR the gig bag, though.)
The photos DO NOT do this guitar justice. Basically a 360 neck on a 330 (square edge) body. Though a one-piece neck, the heel is exactly as you'd hope.
Downsides? Surely... none insurmountable. The unbound soundhole edge is a little rough so I'm thinking of some cautious sanding. The strings sit high in the nut (though not unplayable). The frets need polishing. Aside from the logo, there's no identifying marks whatever.
SOME UPSIDES
It's light, well-balanced, with VERY nice unplugged tone.
The covered minibuckers are rather good, if hardly a threat to DiMarzio. I'm curious if the gnarly "authentic" pickups would fit right in.
I like the wire tailpiece MUCH better than the originals' sheetmetal.
The neck is unbound -- something I'd much rather have than half-arsed binding! -- & the fretboard is natural rather than that weird gloss/semigloss of the originals.
Note that the headstock shape, trussrod cover, & logo placement are pointedly NOT like the original -- chalk it up to intelligence. The tuners could readily be replaced by medium Rotos, but respond like typical basic Gotoh or Schaller so no good reason to throw 'em out.
Only played briefly, but no sharp fret-ends noted.
Though not aggressive, the veneer does have a nice flame to it.
DOWNSIDE:
Here's a stumper: name one low-tier off-brand model of guitar.
Now, look it up on your fave search-engine, adding the word USED.
You get dozens, right? if not hundreds?
There's almost ZERO hits for cozart used, almost all at Reverb.com. Even there, I find a mere TEN instruments, two of which are squeezboxes.
(In this instance, ignore the hits for Kansas University quarterback Montell Cozart...!)
I've known the brand name for at least four years, yet there don't seem to be ANY traction in the Western Hemisphere. I think Cozart might eventually become the 201x-era Tokai, if not Matsumoku. Don't overlook interesting oddities like the double-cut electric resonator for <$250. The white single-cut is even cheaper. Or the 12-string teardrop for $295 or less. They also have double-six lap steels <$250, & SG-style 6/12 with HSC at <$500. Seems that Cozart MIGHT have a few grains of Common Sense that could readily earn them a niche in the Frugal market.
CRITICAL EVALUATION
Everything OOB is good-to-great. String height, intonation, neck curve, pickup height... even the rosewood looks like it might've been oiled at some distant time, unlike the sun-baked look most imports have.
The weak point of too many electrics is the TOM-ripoff bridge, a truly generic style that is too narrow to allow a proper degree of slug travel. Because of this, minuscule variants in manufacturing sometimes add up in one direction or the other, & it's not unusual that one or two strings can't be properly intonated. In this case, it's the G (which seems to be most common); though many players would never notice at all, even if they spend a lot of time above fret 12. I may file-work the vee-cut in the saddle to see if I can't get that last .025mm, else I'd need to pull the slug & grind the face a little. Or, heck, I try to install a Schaller "Nashville" bridge I've heard as an upgrade.
As I said, the nut slots could be dropped a little, but the height doesn't make it unplayable at all, just more stiff than necessary. And the frets are nice but could benefit from a polishing (maybe a StewMac "eraser" block).
The neck is middling-slim, not the half-round log found in some imports, yet NOT trying to be a Wizard II or any such nonsense. Oh, & the inlays are rather nice, with some MOP-like colors in direct light.
The chamber is actually smaller than I would've expected, given the guitar's weight & the rather nice tone that comes out of the catseye. That middle bar is big, yet the guitar sounds more like a true semi-hollow archtop, maybe from the interaction of the rout-outs for soundhole AND controls AND pickups. Unintentional, perhaps, but it WORKS.
It's the headstock build that tells me this model might not become an heirloom. The neck is one piece, all the way down -- no joint, before OR after the nut. From this, I'm guessing the moderate headstock tilt is a steam-bend. There's no "volute" bump whatever, & of course a chunk of wood went away for trussrod access, which weakens that joint further... or what we might call the Gibson Problem. Certainly a design that would benefit from the Washburn-style heel-end adjustment wheel!!
But, really, I can't see getting too exercised:
(a) it's an awfully goshdarn GOOD under-$500 guitar, not a Big Name gewgaw to keep in a climate-controlled vault
(b) though plywood, it's STILL a semihollow, & bashing it around like a cheap Teleclone is Not A Good Idea no matter how you tell it
(c) ditto for if you slap the guitar down hard, cased or not -- the death of many an LP/SG; make sure the case at least ATTEMPTS to give proper head/neck support, & don't throw it (duh!!)
Someone told me the pickguard is actually more like what's on a 340 or 370, because the lower guard stops rihgt at the pickups & doesn't go between. Well, heck, I know fair NOTHING about The Original Brand, so maybe. But then I see two 360s on Google Images, where one extends between the pickups & the other doesn't, so there ya go.
I bring this up because there's so little leeway to make little "personalizing" tweaks to anything that ain't a Stratoclone. Pickguards are generally expensive... & white. At least Pickguardian has a dozen options (albeit $70/set!!). WD Music Products claims to -- they show 61 (!!) sets for the 4003 bass, $40-$70 -- but they also say to download the 2014 catalogue, so I remain skeptical.
FWIW: still no luck whatEVer at locating solid info on Cozart. Well, okay, not STRICTLY true, but amazingly tenuous in this internet age.
There are the Cozart guitar kits, but it seems like a mere guess that THIS Cozart is the same as THAT Cozart.
cozartguitars.angelfire.com/
And there's an eBay seller, RAS COZART MUSIC USA, that carries the kits AND some models readily identifiable as Cozart-branded instruments (along with some rather random-seeming musical stuff), but doesn't consistently use "Cozart" in auction headings.
stores.ebay.com/RAS-COZART-MUSIC-USA?rmvSB=true
Thus far, when I'm able to track down owners of the Catseye (gotta call it something), almost ALL the complaints are "the nut slots aren't deep enough," usually balanced by glowing praise of the overall workmanship.