Slick SL 56 | A unique and affordable semi-hollow offset with tones for days! In-depth Review & Demo

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This is the Slick Guitars SL 56: an eye-catching, affordable semi-hollow take on the Jazzmaster/Jaguar style of offset electric guitar… with more than a few twists up its sleeve!

Slick Guitars:

Ever since I first came across Slick Guitars, I’ve wanted to try the whole family. My first experience with the brand came when I tested out the wonderful Cabronita Tele-esque SL 55 (video here, if you’ve not seen that yet: ) and, as a natural fan of the offset guitar, I was totally drawn to the SL 56.

This is another unique guitar from Earl Slick (yes, the same Earl Slick who played guitar for David Bowie, John Lennon, and others) and his team. Similar to a Fender or Squier offering on first glance, once you look past the body shape you start to see the quirks and idiosyncrasies that really make this guitar different.

It starts with the stunning Aged Indigo Ash finish on the swamp ash body. Eye-catching in pictures, it’s spectacular in person, and the body’s textured finish really draws you in too – it feels pure and organic to the touch, and I love the fact that the satin finish is kept as thin and unobtrusive as possible throughout. (Note: you can get the SL 56 in a more timeless aged sunburst finish, should you so desire!)

It's also semi-hollow, and you get two f-holes here as well, which really add to the guitar’s visual vibes.

The pickups are also something you’d not expect on a guitar of this nature. In the neck, you get a classic 50s voiced Slick Junior P90, which is contrasted massively in the bridge by an overwound Slick Fullerton Lead Telecaster-style job, for all your biting and twangy Tele goodness.

Meanwhile, the hardware is mostly brass and bronze: the wraparound bridge is milled from a single brass billet, and the knobs (you get one Volume and one Tone) and selector switch are made to match. Up at the headstock, the Slick tuners feature a bronze crown gear and bronze pinion gear and solid brass knobs.

The satin neck is solid Canadian hard rock maple, and it’s topped with a 22-fret jatoba fingerboard. The scale length is 25.5”, and the fingerboard radius is 12”, while the neck is fitted with a 43mm graphite nut.

When you realize that all this comes in at a mere $309/€450 (yes, all Slicks are much cheaper in the USA than anywhere else!) you start to see that we’ve got a serious contender on our hands in the world of the budget offset.

But just how good is the SL 56? Can it match the competition from the likes of Squier, Harley Benton, Vintage Guitars, and more? Or is it simply too different to be compared to any of the others? That’s what we’re about to find out!

In this video, I try the SL 56 in as many different musical styles as I can, from country, folk and indie, to pop, rock, punk, metal, and more – let’s see how it handles it!

Let me know your thoughts on the SL 56 in the comments.

Here are some links to the various playing samples and info bits:

00:00 Hello!
00:14 Introduction to the Slick SL 56
01:07 Specs and features
04:40 Today’s rig and plan

05:22 Clean tone reference chords on all pickup settings
05:38 Clean tone samples (folk, country, pop, indie, blues, funk, etc.)
08:10 Tone control test
09:13 Indie and alt rock tones
12:45 Volume control roll off test
13:06 Classic rock tones (AC/DC, Hendrix, Airbourne, etc.)
15:30 Hard rock tones
17:30 Alternative rock tones
18:05 Punk rock tones
18:58 Progressive rock tones
19:55 Metal tones

22:11 My thoughts
22:59 First impressions, looks
23:26 Weight
23:51 Build quality and hardware
24:35 Playability and neck
25:56 Sounds and pickups
29:18 What other similar guitars are out there?
32:02 My conclusions on the SL 56 and why you should buy it

My setup was as follows: I ran the SL 56 into my Hughes & Kettner Black Spirit 200 head, also using my Greer Lightspeed, Marshall 1959 Super Lead, Friedman BE-OD Deluxe and Revv G3 pedals for overdrive and heavy distortion sounds. The amp went from the Red Box DI straight into my Focusrite Scarlett 2i4, which went into Logic Pro X. That's it. No post-processing on the sounds was done.

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Get all this gear at Thomann:
At Sweetwater:
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Backing music from the YouTube Audio Library: Duck In The Alley – TrackTribe.

#SlickGuitars #OffsetGuitars #OffsetGuitar #BudgetGuitars

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