Did you heard the name of the Guitar Brand whose Guitars sells out within a couple of days as soon as it gets stock up?
If you were not living under a rock then you probably have heard the name "Firefly Guitars".
Firefly Guitars is one of the most hyped guitar brands in today’s market and luckily for all for the good reasons.
There's few other brands too that offers relatively similar guitars along with likely price bracket, but none of them has gained the attention and love like Firefly.
This is not any kind of hype up post for the Firefly Guitar.
But it took me more than 6 months to get my hands on these guitar even when I personally reached one of the close guy to provide me one of their famous model the – “ ES 335 Style Guitar ”
Oh, I forgot to mention that I was trying to order it from last 1 years on Amazon and it gets sold out within a couple of days from its availability.
It’s nearly impossible to get your hands on if you going to get it first time.
What makes the Firefly Guitars so demanding?
In this Firefly Guitar review I will look at every important aspect of the models in which a standard guitars can be judged upon.
What’s good in it and what’s needs to be improved.
I will share my experience with the two of the famous models :
- Firefly Guitar 335 - (Semi Hollow)
- Firefly Electric Guitar
- Firefly 338 (✪ New )
Chances are you will be out of luck if you look for these Guitars now.
So check out these alternate options of Fire-Fly Guitars with likely similar quality and Price.
What makes Firefly Guitar Stands Out ?
Design :
Overall the Firefly Semi hollow model I used is really nice for the buck.
The arch on the back is nearly perfect and Top of the guitar looks and feels like the Clone of Strat and Tele.
The Neck Inlays, Lustorous Body , Bindings everything was better than my expectation at every level.
On the semi-acoustic model the one I was using you might notice that the horns are a little sharper than a traditional 335.
But that does not make it looks odd, It somewhat adds a bit of its own personality I guess.
It retains a very nice classic look, I chose the Sunburst color which is the original and iconic color of the Gibson ES 335.
So overall design is really impressive, It's a maple body, a maple neck and kind of rosewood fingerboard which is simply a classic combination
Its quite rare to get an awesome looking near to perfect to guitar at $150 .
With the above being said lets looks at the next factor.
Where and Who Makes Firefly Guitars ?
Price :
The price of firefly guitar is absolutely insane.
Most of the models hover somewhere around a $100 hundred and $150 which makes them very difficult to get.
Because of it as soon as the Firefly Guitars come in stock they get snapped up quickly.
So the price is huge bargain when compared with the quality you get.
Strong Body :
This is part of the overall design that the Firefly ES 335 looking guitar got super minimal tilt back on the headstock.
It means that the Guitar may take some accidental tumbles and doesn't end up completely broken. Atleast the playability will remain intact for long time.
This Firefly Guitar is made of maple wood which give it a solid and strong body.
Overall in respect to build quality I can say that it is quite strong then 17 degree tilted back that you generally found on Gibson Guitars.
Bone Nut :
If you are a bit familiar with Guitars than you will agree with me when I say :
The Nut responsible for string spacing is one of the most essential part of guitars.
A worn out Nut may result in bad tuning, inconsistent tones and poor experience.
When I looked at my Firefly ES 335 Semi-Acoustic Guitar I was quite surprised that this $150 Guitar is using a Bone Nut for string spacing.
You will be surprised to hear that the Guitar Brand Fender started adding bone nuts to their American Series until they launched the Professional Series Guitar 3 years ago.
Even a million dollar Guitar Brand Gibson does not uses bone nut. (You can manually add the bone nut on Gibson guitars.)
So, Again repeating the point that a $150 - "Firefly Guitars comes with Bone Nut" which will influence the tone and playability in the better direction.
Other Parts Of The Firefly Guitars :
Headstock and Back - The headstock of this ES 335 inspired guitar is nice and clean and does its job of holding the strings pretty good.
In the back of the headstock you will find the regular basic tuning machines. The gear heads are free enough to adjust the tension of strings easily.
Pickups, Buttons and More :
In short, I can say that every other hardware part of the Firefly guitar I use was near to perfect.
There's barely any room for complain.
The quality of the bridge is good.
It also has slots for head adjustments for height.
The stop tail piece is also really nice.
The ES 335 style Firefly Guitar has two volumes and two tones buttons and a switch.
These looks good but the lustrous finish may fade after some time.
The Guitar has dime size pots and I took a look inside and found there's been no cut outs, there's been no grit, no static in the pots or anything like that.
The F holes themselves actually look really good for a price for a guitar in this $150 price range, In short the F holes are pretty clean.
It is also quite Lightweight too. (7 lbs)
Company Behind The Firefly Guitars
What Needs To Be Improved ?
With so many praises mentioned above let’s look at what needs to be improved.
Frets :
I felt like the frets are all a little rough (gritty).
It feels like they haven't been polished before shipping out from the factory.
So when you play the Firefly Guitar or do a vibrato you are going to feel gritiness and hear the grittiness of your fingers.
So, to bring it back to life you need to remove the frets (only if you can remove the frets without chipping it) and polish it up.
Or you can do it the other way by just polishing it up by playing it.
You need to simply do a lot of bands on all of the fret individually.
The strings generally polish up the frets while playing it.
But, my suggestion would be to remove the string and polish it up to remove the grittiness.
And change the strings too. I always suggest to use a brand new string with every guitar you purchase for a better playing experience.
Another issue with the frets are that the Fret ends shows a lot of tooling marks.
However this is barely noticeable, But as a reviewer it’s my duty to aware you even the tiniest of the issue with the instrument.
Upon closure inspection you may find that almost all of the frets ends are not that well cut out. The fret ends are sharp and you may end up with cuts in your hands if you not handle it with care.
I found this issue in both of the firefly guitar I used.
So the frets and it ends needs to polished and I think it is not that big of issue and can be expected on a $150 Guitar.
Pickups :
Another slight issue I noticed is with the pickup. The Pickup were inconsistently or poorly potted which means they're slightly microphonic.
So, I think they sound really good but if you push them with a little more pressure they're gonna squeal with a lot of gain because like I said they were poorly potted and you can literally hear your voice in the pickup.
Finishing On Bindings :
I think this is the only thing Firefly Guitars needs to be be worked upon.
Upon closure inspection you can see that the bindings are kind of not even on some points of the guitars. The bindings are overlapping on few areas.
You can also see the intersections are missing a detailed finishing aspect.
But, these are minor issues and this is not a $500 - $800 guitar, so expecting these kind of minor details perfection not seems fair at first place.
And these bindings imperfection does not effect the playability at all. So, Its not something you should stretch upon.
And I think we can understand why there's some finishing issue before shipping the guitars.
Because the biggest challenge with the firefly guitar brand is that they are not able to cope up with the increasing demand of the guitars.
And supply is pretty limited by their end.
Inlays :
Again a minor issue I found is in the the Trapezoid inlays. The trapezoid inlays are good but not all of them are perfectly parallel.
Few of them are slightly skew, But spotting them is not that easy.
As I said they very slightly skew and can only be seen when you give a closure look to it. Its Barely noticeable.
Where to buy Firefly Guitars ?
My Experience With The Firefly Guitar - The Semi Hollow ES 335
So to sum up my experience, I can very confidently say that the Firefly Guitars are simply "Stunning" .
If you don't mind the minor cosmetic defects than there's nothing to complain about.
But keep one thing in mind.
As you now know that these guitars are made in very large bulk to meet the current demands and are probably manufactured in 3rd world countries to meet the budget price tag for which it is known for.
Because of the above mentioned cause chances are you may face inconsistencies in the product.
May be yours and mine experience vary on same the models but its highly unlikely.
Currently, I am testing the Firefly Thinline Tele Electric Guitar and I am going to update this article with my experience soon.
Meanwhile, I also reviewed the FF 338 Semi-Hollow Electric Guitar which is worth considering too.
As far ES 335 is considered my suggestion would be just grab it as soon they goes live for sale cause no one knows when the next opportunity will come.
The sound, looks and overall performance is truly remarkable for the price.
Chances are you will be out of luck if you look for these Guitars now.
So check out these Fire-Fly Guitars alternate options with likely similar quality and price.
Till Then,
Keep Playing and Spread Love
ANY BASS GUITARS?
Hey Kenneth currently there’s no Bass Guitars from Firefly, But I found somewhere in social sites (not official) that they may launch a Jazz Style Bass guitar (FFJB) pretty soon.
I just recently attempted to purchase a new FFLP from the Guitars Garden website (12.19.20), and they sent me a previously returned defective “Bat” series LP guitar. When I emailed them regarding the issue they were quick to correspond with me and try and get the guitar working. But once I provided them with the serial number and they realized they had sent me a previously returned damaged guitar from a completely different line, they refuse to answer my emails any further. So, with no way to contact them aside from the emails that they refuse to answer, I’m stuck with a previously returned defective guitar that I didn’t buy and out $209.96. I DO NOT recommend Firefly at ALL.
My God that’s Terrible Michael, If you are not receiving in any response from the people behind the team, I suggest raising the same in Twitter and FB, You will definitely get some feedback from the representatives.
And. I just hope you raised the “issue” within the 7 days of receiving it.