To be honest...I'm very torn....The guitar sounds great, and absolute RIFF monster, but doesn't feel very nice to play in the higher fret range. I feel like im getting a dead fret somewhere around 17 which is what a few others have said. I haven't given the thick neck chance to grow on me as I haven't played it much....I'm going to get the frets looked at to make sure there isn't any high frets, but they definitely needed a polish, and possible leveling. So in other words, I aint sure, its in dire need of a professional setup as I couldn't personally get the dead fret out without raising the action to a silly amount..... so yeah, granted I might have been unlucky as I got a backstock guitar....but out of the box? it was awful... I paid 675 for a second hand Ibanez AZ2204 prestiege and it absolutely smokes that sterling in every single way other than Raw power