Uploaded November 2025 | Updated September 2026, 1 week ago
This is the Hartwood Drifter: an extremely affordable budget offset guitar in the Jazzmaster/Jaguar vein combining classic looks, modern playability and a pair of P90 pickups!
Hartwood Drifter at Gear4music: tidd.ly/4oUBI9x
I’ve tried a few Hartwood guitars in 2025 – Hartwood is a house brand of the Gear4music store, by the way – and I’ve been impressed by them all for their performance and value for money ratios.
The Fender/Squier Jazzmaster-esque Drifter, though, is the cheapest of the lot, coming in at about $200/€199/£179 as I made this video in November 2025. That’s pocket money prices for a guitar these days, but what do you get for your money?
Well, it starts with a basswood body – in this case, finished in a beautiful rich Sunburst and topped with a black scratchplate. It’s certainly a guitar that looks more expensive than it is. (You can also get the Drifter in Orchard Red, Green, and Metallic Blue colorways.)
At the body, you get a pair of Hartwood’s own P90 pickups, and a vintage style vibrato bridge (often a tuning stability weak point on guitars at this price point). You also get two chrome knobs (one for Volume, one for Tone) that look just like the ones you get on a Yamaha Revstar, which I like. It’s something a bit different for a guitar of this type.
The Drifter’s neck is a more modern affair. It’s a standard modern C shape, made of satin roasted maple and topped with a 16” radius (so super flat!) laurel fingerboard that features 22 medium frets. At least, Hartwood tell us they’re medium: my hands and eyes think they’re medium jumbo. What do you think? Whatever they are, they certainly have nicely rounded edges for $200!
We also get pretty cool pearloid inlays – again, fairly Revstar-esque in their roundedness – and no-name tuners at the headstock.
All in all, this looks like an awful lot of guitar for the money… but how good can the Drifter really be for this price? It’s time to find out! In this video, I put the Drifter through its paces 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 Drifter in the comments!
Here are some links to the various playing samples and info bits:
00:00 Introduction to the Drifter and Hartwood Guitars
01:19 Specs and features
04:04 Today’s rig and plan
04:32 Clean tone reference chords on all pickup settings
04:49 Clean tone samples (folk, country, pop, indie, blues, funk, etc.)
06:53 Tone control test
07:57 Indie and alt rock tones
10:04 Volume control roll off test
10:26 Classic rock tones (AC/DC, Hendrix, Airbourne, etc.)
12:19 Hard rock tones
13:51 Alternative rock tones
14:18 Punk rock tones
14:59 Progressive rock tones
15:39 Metal tones
17:08 My thoughts
17:54 First impressions, looks
18:22 Weight
18:48 Build quality and hardware
19:49 Playability and neck
20:39 Sounds and pickups
22:56 What other similar guitars are out there?
24:19 My conclusions on the Drifter and why you should buy it
My setup was as follows: I ran the Drifter into my Hughes & Kettner Black Spirit 200 head, also using my Greer LightSpeed, Marshall 1959 Super Lead 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: thmn.to/thocf/jkhog8l06m
At Sweetwater: sweetwater.sjv.io/LXqdE0
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Backing music from the YouTube Audio Library: Duck In The Alley – TrackTribe.
#Hartwood #HartwoodGuitars #Gear4music #OffsetGuitars #Offset
*Note: certain links in the description are affiliate links. If you click said links and purchase anything as a result, I will receive a small commission. This doesn’t cost you anything extra, but it does help to support the channel. So, if you do that, thank you very much!*
@gear4musicguitars
This is the Hartwood Drifter: an extremely affordable budget offset guitar in the Jazzmaster/Jaguar vein combining classic looks, modern playability and a pair of P90 pickups!
Hartwood Drifter at Gear4music: tidd.ly/4oUBI9x
I’ve tried a few Hartwood guitars in 2025 – Hartwood is a house brand of the Gear4music store, by the way – and I’ve been impressed by them all for their performance and value for money ratios.
The Fender/Squier Jazzmaster-esque Drifter, though, is the cheapest of the lot, coming in at about $200/€199/£179 as I made this video in November 2025. That’s pocket money prices for a guitar these days, but what do you get for your money?
Well, it starts with a basswood body – in this case, finished in a beautiful rich Sunburst and topped with a black scratchplate. It’s certainly a guitar that looks more expensive than it is. (You can also get the Drifter in Orchard Red, Green, and Metallic Blue colorways.)
At the body, you get a pair of Hartwood’s own P90 pickups, and a vintage style vibrato bridge (often a tuning stability weak point on guitars at this price point). You also get two chrome knobs (one for Volume, one for Tone) that look just like the ones you get on a Yamaha Revstar, which I like. It’s something a bit different for a guitar of this type.
The Drifter’s neck is a more modern affair. It’s a standard modern C shape, made of satin roasted maple and topped with a 16” radius (so super flat!) laurel fingerboard that features 22 medium frets. At least, Hartwood tell us they’re medium: my hands and eyes think they’re medium jumbo. What do you think? Whatever they are, they certainly have nicely rounded edges for $200!
We also get pretty cool pearloid inlays – again, fairly Revstar-esque in their roundedness – and no-name tuners at the headstock.
All in all, this looks like an awful lot of guitar for the money… but how good can the Drifter really be for this price? It’s time to find out! In this video, I put the Drifter through its paces 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 Drifter in the comments!
Here are some links to the various playing samples and info bits:
00:00 Introduction to the Drifter and Hartwood Guitars
01:19 Specs and features
04:04 Today’s rig and plan
04:32 Clean tone reference chords on all pickup settings
04:49 Clean tone samples (folk, country, pop, indie, blues, funk, etc.)
06:53 Tone control test
07:57 Indie and alt rock tones
10:04 Volume control roll off test
10:26 Classic rock tones (AC/DC, Hendrix, Airbourne, etc.)
12:19 Hard rock tones
13:51 Alternative rock tones
14:18 Punk rock tones
14:59 Progressive rock tones
15:39 Metal tones
17:08 My thoughts
17:54 First impressions, looks
18:22 Weight
18:48 Build quality and hardware
19:49 Playability and neck
20:39 Sounds and pickups
22:56 What other similar guitars are out there?
24:19 My conclusions on the Drifter and why you should buy it
My setup was as follows: I ran the Drifter into my Hughes & Kettner Black Spirit 200 head, also using my Greer LightSpeed, Marshall 1959 Super Lead 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.
---
Get all this gear at Thomann: thmn.to/thocf/jkhog8l06m
At Sweetwater: sweetwater.sjv.io/LXqdE0
---
Backing music from the YouTube Audio Library: Duck In The Alley – TrackTribe.
#Hartwood #HartwoodGuitars #Gear4music #OffsetGuitars #Offset
*Note: certain links in the description are affiliate links. If you click said links and purchase anything as a result, I will receive a small commission. This doesn’t cost you anything extra, but it does help to support the channel. So, if you do that, thank you very much!*
@gear4musicguitars
