CORT G250 | REVIEW

Cort G250

MSRP: (UK) £269 / (US) $TBC

The G Series by Cort is billed as a logical evolution of the term "vintage". While modern, it retains the familiar characteristics of the classic double-cutaway design in an aesthetically tasteful manner. This double-cutaway collection includes a wide variety of options and features to best meet a player's specific needs and requirements. G250 features humbucker, single, single pickup configuration providing a wide variety of sounds to cover virtually any musical style. Nick Jennison tells us more.

It never ceases to astonish me how much guitar you can get for your money these days. I say “these days”, because I’ve been playing guitar for 26 years now, and I’ve seen the quality of entry-level guitars creep up, while the price progressively creeps down and down. Out of curiosity, I decided to get all nerdy and dig up some guitar catalogues from the year I started playing: 1995.

In 1995, a Squier “Tradition” series Strat (the most basic model available at the time) would set you back around £155 - equivalent to around £305 in today’s money. Now, modern Squiers are excellent guitars for sure, but the entry-level models in 1995 were hideous. Uneven frets with ends that would cut you to ribbons, an action that would make lap steel players blush, weak pickups, unusable tremolos, nasty machine heads that didn’t really work, and worst of all… the dreaded plywood body.

Compare that to the Cort G250, which will leave you enough change out of £305 for an overdrive pedal, or six months worth of strings, or a REALLY nice burger and a milkshake.

Now, if you’ve heard the name “Cort” but you’re not sure where you know it from, Cort is the in-house brand for the South Korean guitar manufacturer Cor-Tek, who are responsible for building the entry-level import guitars from many of your favourite brands. If you’ve played a modern Korean-made Squier, G&L, Ibanez (among others), you’ve played a Cor-Tex guitar, and you’ll know just how good they are. The G250 is no exception.

For a frankly outrageous price, you get a really comfortable maple neck, faultless fretwork, a choice of attractive finishes (including the gold and silver models I took a look at in the video that accompanies this review), HSS pickups that not only sound really good but also come with a push-pull coil-split, and a tremolo that works great and stays in tune. When I say you’re getting a lot of guitar for your money, I’m not joking.

Sonically, the G250 is a “Fat Str*t” at heart. The neck and middle single-coils are bright, punchy and wiry on their own, with that great out-of-phase character we love so much in positions 2 and 4. Interestingly, setting the pickup selector to position 2 (position that is often a bit of a let down on HSS guitars) automatically splits the bridge humbucker for a really authentic spank. The bridge humbucker has a really nice balance of fatness and clarity too.

Playability-wise, there’s very little to fault. The factory setup makes full-on legato shred feel a little like hard work, but that’s nothing that 10 minutes with an Allen key couldn’t fix. For styles like blues, funk, classic rock and even metal riffing, the G250 plays very well indeed - and it’s tonally versatile enough to cover all of those styles too.

The Cort G250 is a really appealing prospect for the budget-conscious guitarist. Whether you’re looking for your first electric, buying for a young relative, looking for a great backup instrument or even an inexpensive but high-quality touring guitar to spare your expensive instruments the rigours of the road, the G250 is definitely worth a look.

For more information, please visit:

cortguitars.com