The rosewood fretboard is fast feeling with tall frets and is wider than a Fender--medium and bigger than a "wide/thin" neck making it easy to play and bend strings. We liked the real bone nut and the custom pearl Confederate Flag X inlays--my old buddies in Lynyrd Skynyrd would love this look.

There are two single coil pickups and we noticed the bridge pickup to have that good 'ol Tele spank but with more mid-range thickness. We were plugged into a Gabriel Voxer 18-watt amp for our testing and found this guitar to play very well and incredibly in tune--as if it had been Plek'd. The overall finish and body work is all business with the same flat black matte satin "Rat Rod" paint job as the rest of the Chop Shop series reviewed in these pages. The hot rod touches continued with all chrome tuner machines, shiny chrome hardware and knurled control knobs.

The Southern Belle comes standard with a rugged HLK hard case and sells for $339MSRP. It can be purchased, like any guitar in the entire Chop Series, at select Hardluck Kings dealers or at: www.hardluckkings.com.