Ormsby Goliath headless GTR - 6, 7, AND 8 string multiscale

maybe it's just me, but as someone who would be interested in possibly owning an Ormsby (as various facebook groups, youtube reviews etc seem to imply he/the company is one of the straight up best), but as a member of the offical Ormsby guitar facebook group (the "Runs" group not just liking the facebook page), there really seems to be almost a cult-like attitude towards Perry and the company that weirds me out ...

 

eh it's the same for every reddit/facebook group thingie man. anyone that posts in there every single day on every topic are doing it because they found a niche where they can finally belong.

it's just basic psychology. don't let that turn you away from a guitar you might consider. look past that garbage and look for real honest reviews.

 

mine aren't anywhere near as wonky as yours, but they are slightly wobbly, specifically the 15th fret is just a tiny bit higher than the others. The black filler around the luminlays is kind of messy on the 9th,12th and 24th frets.

 

Oh boy! That's not awful, but it'd be enough to constantly bother me. :/

 

I think your looks better then mine. Yours only look slight off. Mine look like the worker was drunk.

Still waiting to see what ormsby says.

@bostjan Would this give you fits. I wonder if I’m being unreasonable.

 

At least they seem to be consistently sloppy.

Those fretboards also seem a little poorly planed, in that they aren't really "flat," if you know what I mean, which bothers me, visually, more than the inlays.

Thanks for posting these pic's.

 

Ya I dunno what to look for in that regard. The actual fretwork and neck are fine. Straight neck, no high frets, no sharp edges, low action. Plays well.

The scale length needs some adjusting too. It's got a few minor things like a small finish defect and a small chip on the edge of the neck pocket. But at this price for a headless, that's ok for me.

but the side dots are for looking at...and looking at these gives me vertigo.

Kind of still trying to figure out what to do. I've bought a lot of guitars and I've never returned a guitar for a visual defect before...but I've also never bought a new guitar that was this wonky.

 

Yeah the neck looks a little tilted forward, I think there is even a shim at the top of the heel on mine (no wonky side dots though). But looking at how the strings go into the bridge it makes sense that the neck is shimmed. Even with that shim the saddle screws are quite far in. I also remember seeing the following on the Kiesel "hate thread" : there was a whole debate around Aries having the neck shimmed in the other direction; coupled the thin bridge plate version, the saddles were absurdly high. Maybe they had the same issue here with the thin bridge plate, but had enough wits to shim it in the correct direction to compensate.

 

Don't you work for Ormsby in some capacity? Of course you don't care. You should also disclose your affiliation with them in your signature.

 

he mostly does mockups/some photography for them iirc. he also does mockups for sully.

 

never ending drama with my Goliath.

A-branger isn't wrong. At this price point I'll let a lot of things go. There's a spot on lower bevel where there's just no sparkle paint on top of the base coat. There's literally a three dimensional gap that's covered by the top clear coat. There's a chip in the neck pocket where the neck was obviously bumped sliding into the pocket. There's excessive glue on the nut.

Whatever, this stuff is all ok. These are all minor cosmetic issues. Any guitar I own for a significant period of time is going to have so many dings and scratches that those won't be even noticeable.

Side dots serve a functional purpose though. You are supposed to look at them. Now, wonky dots are ok. Every one of my guitars has a few wonky dots. My prestige Ibanez, my hapas, my skervesens all a little wonky. my prs my strandberg all good. Hilariously my Anderson has one dot that is just god awful. Just terrible.

I also haven't bought any really cheap guitars in a long time. Cheap being 500 or less. However, I've done lots of wiring work on wmi PRS SE's and I've checked out a lot of SE's and schecters and lower Ibanez's at guitar stores. I've also spent the last week asking people and looking at pictures of Goliaths.

I'm genuinely more curious then mad. However, my opinion of this matter, and granted my sample size is limited to about 100 guitars and maybe 10 Goliaths, is that these dots of simply the worst dots I have ever seen in my life at a price point 800 and up, and these dots are by far the worst Goliath side dots I have seen.

But, Perry and I worked out a solution.

However, I just discovered a significant electrical issue today. I'm going to talk to Perry about next week and then I'll do a write up here when we reach a solution.

I'm slowly getting a bit more mad. I just feel like any one of these issues would be fine.

All of these things I've found added together make me feel that QC failed at multiple points when building and examining this particular guitar. This should never have been sold as an A-stock new guitar.

But, Perry's been great even if that fbook is just filled with idiots. So I'm sure we can work something out.

 

waiting for Ormsby to respond to my email about a neck exchange while watching Perry post hourly in the facebook group is lol.

 

I've recently started GASing for a Goliath but the QC issues I'm now reading about give me something to think about. If I may interject with another question though. Can anyone here that has played or owned one of these comment on how the scale length feels compared to a more tradition fan ie 25.5-27? I really like the idea of even more tension on the lower strings but I worry about playing comfort on those first few frets.

 

As long as you can laugh (out loud) about it, everything seems to be fine

 

One thing I wish everyone could keep in mind (and this is not defending Ormsby in particular, I have no dog in this) is that if your business is big enough it is definitely possible for these seemingly "strange" email answering times vs facebook posts etc thing to just be 100% valid and nothing to worry about. I myself worked for such a company/role and there were plenty of times an email that would literally take me 2 minutes to answer had to wait days because of other necessary tasks etc.

As a Steam user, if anyone else is familiar with their legendary poor customer service/support times, once I read how many tickets/emails a day they get I completely understand why it would take them months sometimes to respond.

 

well my review is here

http://sevenstring.org/threads/nad-ormsby-goliath-6-string-review-and-stuff.330542/

you can read my thoughts on it

 

These days I really prefere the 25.5-27 with the 7th fret being the perpendicular one. The scale length and perpendicular fret Perry choose for the GTRs was too extreme for my average sized hands.

 

Read! Thanks again for sharing

I also agree that 7 is ideal for the parallel fret. I bought an Ibanez RGIF7 when they first came out and had to return it because of how uncomfortable is was. I think they put theirs at the 12th fret if I recall correctly.

Thank you for the input though. I'm pretty torn between the LTD multiscale and an Ormsby at the moment and the scale length of the Ormsby is both drawing me in and putting me off. I love the idea of a bit more tension but it definitely doesn't LOOK very comfortable on those bottom frets