For a while now, people have been telling me about some low-to-mid-priced hollow-body guitars that, from what I've heard, tend to have the qualities of a very good instrument, with some differences, of course. This has been happening for about ten or twelve years and is due to new instrument-manufacturing markets and trade agreements with new manufacturing countries.
The Peavey Rockingham B6 fits that profile quite well, and I'd been wanting to get my hands on a guitar like this, because I find it incredible that for 599 euros (hard case included) you can get features almost as good as those of a 3,000-euro guitar.
Unboxing
I take it out of the case, where it fits snugly so it doesn't move. The headstock is held up in the air by a good neck rest, something essential in a good case. The guitar looks phenomenal. There are two series, one with a Bigsby tremolo and another with a chrome tailpiece.
For those who don't know the Bigsby, it's a type of tremolo that predates, and is very different from, Van Halen's Floyd Rose. The first one I tried was on a 1964 Gretsch Tennessean that I still have. When you use it, the strings tighten and loosen slightly, while their pressure moves the bridge at the same time, creating a very gentle vibrato effect.
Acoustic assessment
Acoustically, it has an even sound across the strings and good resonance in the body. The spruce soundboard (5 mm) is arched, with a cutaway and two f-holes. The sides (73 mm) and back are laminated maple, as is the neck, which has twenty-two frets and a rosewood fingerboard—very slim and comfortable, by the way, with a nut width of 4.2 cm and a 25.5" scale. One problem I notice is that the fret ends aren't properly filed, and you can actually cut yourself, although that's easy to fix: give them a quick pass with a very fine metal file and you're done, or take it to a luthier, which will cost you next to nothing.
Plugged in
Plugging it in reminds me of those hollow-body guitar sounds from thirty or forty years ago. Even though it uses two humbucking pickups that could give it a pop or rock edge at a given moment, a compact, sweet vintage sound dominates. There's a three-way switch, a master volume and tone, and independent volumes for each pickup that give it a wide variety of different sounds.
The bridge is fairly modern, made of rosewood with individual adjustment for each string. It responds very well with the tremolo, since it's balanced in the air and returns to its original position after use, leaving the guitar practically in tune.
Conclusions
I find it truly incredible that a guitar that is, at first glance, perfectly valid for a professional musician costs so little. If you look at it coldly and subtract the margins of the store, the distributor and the brand, the cost of the components, the labor, the hard case, the frets, glues and varnishes, it really seems impossible to make anything from the sale of an instrument. What is certain, though, is that an independent builder has a really hard time competing with these prices in terms of a guitar's functionality. A good instrument made by a luthier has significant added creative value; it's also a work of art (if the builder is good) and a safe investment over time.
The overall quality of the Rockingham B6 is good, and it's recommended both for musicians who are starting out and for professionals looking for a vintage hollow-body sound. Woods that aren't top quality can cause problems over time because of humidity, internal knots or temperature changes. I've seen this happen even with high-end guitars, just as I've seen cheap guitars that sound better every day. It's purely a matter of chance, although I notice that the percentage of good, affordable and functionally sound guitars keeps rising. Take this one as an example.
