Adam Black Orion Electric Guitar

Body - Alder, raised centre strip
Neck - Maple, set neck, 25.5" scale
Fingerboard - Ebony, no inlays, 24 jumbo frets
Hardware - Black Nickel
Bridge -  Tune-o-matic, string thru tailpiece
Tuners - Grover
Pickups - 2 * ASBO High Output Humbuckers
Controls - 2*volume, 1*tone, 3-way selector

The Orion is an Adam Black original, their most popular electric guitar shape for many years, and this is it's latest incarnation, from their 'ASBO' raised Centre Range, with a great black-white-black colour scheme and raised centre strip.
It's packed with excellent features as well, locking Grover tuners, high output 'ASBO' humbuckers and an Ebony fingerboard all combine to produce an electric guitar of good playability and impressive sounds, batting well above its sub £200 price.
the headstock is small and compace, an offset triange pointing to the treble side, with a bright white face, and the small Adam Black logo in black. A small white truss rod cover is also on the front.
The back is gloss black, pretty plain, with 2 rows of 3-a-side grover tuners in black Nickel, these are locking versions as well, when restringing, post the string through the hole, tighten up the screw on the top, and tune up as normal, this should reduce string slippage.
Good stuff so far, and we move onto the set Maple neck, a slim D profile, nut width is 42mm. The Ebony fingerboard in fill bound in cream plastic, and there are no position markers on the board.
There are 24 frets on the Orion, all finished to a good standard, no rough edges, well polished up and smooth. The Ebony fingerboard makes a big difference on a budget guitar, OK it might not be the worlds finest Ebony, but a huge improvement on Rosewood. It has a tigher grain and is a harder wood, this gives a nicer, smoother feel to the board and also aids tonal response. Bends and faster fretwork feel somewhat nicer overall. The action on the model from the factory is pretty low, between 2 and 3mm across the board at the 12th fret.
The set neck joins the Alder body at the 18th fret on the bass side, and 20th on the treble, the double cutaway body shape give good access to the 22nd and 23rd frets, although the 24th is a bit more awkward!
The body itself is bound in cream on the top only, and it's entirely gloss black apart from the bright white centre strip on the front, which is raised up by about 3mm.
This strip houses the 2 ASBO open coil humbucking pickups, and they're pretty hot, with the neck giving a good range of rocking rhythm sounds, the bridge having good clarity for lead work on both your clean and dirty channels.
The Orion has a black Nickel tune-o-matic bridge and a string thru body tailpiece, adding more resonance to the overall tone of the guitar. You also get 2 volume controls, a master tone and a 3 way pickup selector switch.
The Orion plays very nicely, it's got a good feeling neck, very nice board, quality pickups, and has a good weight to the body giving plenty of sustain and tone. For a budget guitar, it's an excellent choice and with the cool retro looks, would go down well in any band.

£159