Fret-king corona, country Squire & esprit fluence V £749, £749 & £699
New technology rarely comes cheap and when Fishman entered the electric guitar pickup market with its Fluence pickups, as retrofits, they certainly seemed on the steep side in terms of price. For example, a set of Fluence single coil-sized ‘single width’ units will cost you £319; a pair of standard humbucking sized pickups start at £359 (neither includes a rechargeable battery pack). If you want to install the Greg Koch signature GristleTone set for a Tele-style guitar, the whole package, including rechargeable battery pack, will cost you £589. John Hornby Skewes (JHS) distributes Fishman products in the UK and is also behind the Trev Wilkinson-designed Fret-King brand. Thanks to its ‘special relationship’, it has somehow managed to utilise this Fluence technology and very thoughtfully include a pretty sharp guitar for sub-£750. Game on!
The three new guitars in this new Fluence-equipped range typify what we, and many other players, have been saying for ages: Fret-King makes very good guitars. Indeed, if there were a definition of its Black Label instruments, it might read “nicely made working tools for working musicians”. It ain’t the hippest brand on the block, but its ‘affordable boutique’ marketing tag is accurate, as we see here.
The Corona and Country Squire share a similar alder body/maple neck construction, both with rosewood-only 22-fret ’boards, and only one colour option for each. If these are the ‘Fender-style’ guitars, the none-more-black Esprit uses agathis for its original Jazzmaster-meets-
Explorer body and a maple set-neck, with a 22-fret ’board, while its dual humbuckers and ubiquitous tune-o-matic/stud tailpiece combo and shorter scale of 635mm (25 inches) fill the Gibson-esque slot.
While the Corona and Country Squire are heavily Fender derived, they’re far from clones. Both have ‘modernised’ body outlines: the Corona’s horns are thinner than a Strat’s, while the Country Squire’s base is slightly offset and the shoulder more rounded, its curve flowing rather smartly into the single-cutaway. Their thick neck heels extend under the neck pickups, very similar to PRS’s set-neck or bolt-on guitars; the screws sit in separate recessed ferrules. The pair also has open swimming pool routes under the scratchplate, which means any combination of pickups could be fitted without any additional routing.
The Corona’s bridge is every bit the subtly modernised ‘Strat-type’ with push-fit, swing tension adjustable arm (although the small Allen key to tension the arm is placed some way under the top plate and is rather hard to access) and steel block, while the Country Squire adds nicely compensated and chunky brass saddles to its full-walled Tele-style tray. The Corona goes for rearlock tuners, due to its vibrato. The Country Squire’s are more generic with split posts, and the Esprits have a more Kluson-vibe with chromed keystone buttons. Fit, finish and fretting is all of a high standard and out of the box all three are nicely fit for purpose, though a neck shim on the Corona would mean those saddle height adjustment screws would sit lower, and more comfortably, for right-hand palm muting.
Now, the trickery lies in the pickups: ‘single width’ on the Corona and Country Squire, the latter effectively the Greg Koch ‘Gristle-Tone set, and the Esprit has two Fluence Classic Humbuckers. Irrespective of their size, they’re all humbuckers – the single widths use stacked solid coils. Those
The corona scores is in its ability to go from pristine, immediate cleans into dirtier, heavily gained tones with a clarity that sounds ‘produced’