I have a Kiesel Greg Howe GH24 signature guitar here. Made in late 2017. This guitar is in pristine condition and is excellent guitar design. I will describe the overall feel and tone for you, and please see the last picture in my set for the specification build sheet.
This guitar has some things in common with a Strat but is not quite a Strat, nor is really akin to Super Strats like Jackson's and Ibanez. It is it's own sort of animal that dials in a lovely tone.
It has a Cali burst crimson color finish in high gloss that just looks outstanding. The maple top on this guitar is thin by design, about as thin as a fretboard. The reason this is done is to give you some of the attack and articulation of maple, without losing to much of the very open three dimensional tone of the alder body. Guitars that have fat maple caps that are nearly an inch thick, such as the Kiesel CS6 and CT6. Are going to have a bit more sustain and power from all that maple. But will also sound a little more closed and straight forward. The very fine thin maple top on an Alder body sounds more open with more bloom, and more three dimensional. This combined with a bolt on neck joint rather than a deep set neck, again will make for a snappier, more percussive tone that is "faster" and a little less blunt sounding than a big heavy set neck guitar.
The neck certainly gives plenty of tonal power being all maple, a 5 piece maple neck at that. Overall this guitar certainly has more power and sustain then any strat i have played, the characteristic that jumps out at me about it though is how open, and blended and layered it sounds. It has a very three dimensional, detailed layered sound. It's really present on this guitar. Almost like you are playing in surround sound as opposed to 2 channel stereo.
The pickup configuration is very nice and the 5 way switch will cut both the bridge humbucker and the neck double bar pickup into a single coil tone.
What is significantly different about this then most Strat like builds, is there is no plastic pickguard here for one. Which absolutely does blanket your tone and add plastic resonance to your wood resonance. And the routing is very different. Pickguard covered guitars have huge dugout like routings with the pickups suspended in the air above it. This guitar has direct mounted pickup that are right on the guitar resonating with it and also are unencumbered and right out in the open giving them optimal magnetic expression. It really is an expressive guitar. If this exact same guitar was routed with a pickguard configuration you would have a much different tone.
So this routing configuration is built around allowing as much wood as possible to resonate. Even the lack of the middle pickup contributes to this, if you don't need or use a middle pickup why would want it right smack in the most important resonating spot of the guitar body?
The humbucker sounds great, the double coil bar pickup makes for fat but still clear leads, and a thinner softer lead when used in single coil mode. The humbucker in single coil mode definitely can get you close to a strat pickup sound. Or a very dynamic, rich sounding humbucker experience.
So overall this is a very engineered guitar build. People have been building guitars like this through Warmoth and other custom shops for awhile. But very few production models have this exact setup. It's an amazing sounding ( and looking) guitar and i consider it a refinement of the feature set of Strats and Super Strats.
Conditionally it is clean. Nothing to report at all. Great setup. Plays like butter. There are no dings or blemishes that i can find on it. There me be very faint signs of it being used at all under scrutiny. But overall this is as good and clean as i see in a used guitar. It will come with it's Kiesel ultimate gig bag, best gig bag of all time. Also will ship in it's factory Kiesel box.
I will detune the strings a bit, and put sufficient filler and bracing in the box, and it will be fully insured.
