Fishman Fluence Greg Koch Gristle-Tone

Sound is superb. The kit is mostly well put together, but despite the product pages everywhere showing it with knobs, none are supplied. You'll need 6.3mm shaft knobs and a switch cap. Soldering in the wires is bizarre. The labelled parts of the board are on the underside where you'd think the wires go, but the orientation of the entire switch console and it's recess for wiring means you need to solder them in reverse with little to no clearance between the plastic and the PCB. The neck pickup wire could do with being 5cm longer.

The real killer here is the finish on the bridge pickup, whatever it is, it's extremely fragile. The first came in the unopened box, and when taking it out I noticed the pickup looked like it had chickenpox, little spotches of the finish missing everywhere. I emailed Fishman who confirmed it shoudn't look like that. Thomann took over a month (A month!) to replace it, and the second is just as bad as the first.

Overall a well thought out kit, but that bridge finish is such a disappointment that I can't recommend this to anyone. And Thomann really need to step up their shipping and RMA times. Very poor performance.