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great sounding les paul ... if you swap the pickups ... and electronics
Let me do this 3-way:
1. What I did expect and fortunately did get:
- authentic woods, excellent woodwork and paintwork;
- amazing intrinsic (acoustic) sound - loud, with a great mid-range honk, but crystal clear at the same time, natural sustain for days - which is what makes it a keeper;
- impeccable fretwork - no buzz, no devil here.
2. What I did expect and unfortunately did get:
- slightly weird tuner behaviour on strings 3-5 - there are those blank ranges, where you turn it and the pitch doesn't change for a while until it suddenly does - whether it's the tuners or unfnished nut job, I don't know, but in any case not critical and probably nothing a decent luthier wouldn't fix in the matter of minutes;
- small frets - while the fretwork is great, mind you the size of the frets is on the vintage side and they are both narrower and lower than the, say, Fender notion of medium jumbo - i don't know for a fact, but I would guess that part of it is they PLEK 'em, and that takes a little bit of the height as well.
3. What I did not expect but unfortunately did get:
- the electric sound is a total "meh" and does absolutely no justice to the outstanding acoustic qualities of the guitar - just too mellowed out, no punch, no magic - I put a 498T+490R combo in it, and now we're talking - that's the guitar I hear acoustically, plus the whole lot of electric mojo you want from an electric guitar;
- solderless electronics - all the pots are hard-mounted on a single pc board together with a connection block that sends and receives the signal from and to the pickups, switch and output jack, all of which have plug-ended wires fitting that framework, kinda like EMG's - the reason why i gutted it all out and had it rewired from scratch with the (non-plug-ended) replacement pickups and whatever switch, 500K pots and output jack I had in my box of parts.
In a nutshell, a great platform, but, if you share my understanding of les paul sound, be prepared to put in the time, effort and a few extra euro, if you want to really get there with it.
1. What I did expect and fortunately did get:
- authentic woods, excellent woodwork and paintwork;
- amazing intrinsic (acoustic) sound - loud, with a great mid-range honk, but crystal clear at the same time, natural sustain for days - which is what makes it a keeper;
- impeccable fretwork - no buzz, no devil here.
2. What I did expect and unfortunately did get:
- slightly weird tuner behaviour on strings 3-5 - there are those blank ranges, where you turn it and the pitch doesn't change for a while until it suddenly does - whether it's the tuners or unfnished nut job, I don't know, but in any case not critical and probably nothing a decent luthier wouldn't fix in the matter of minutes;
- small frets - while the fretwork is great, mind you the size of the frets is on the vintage side and they are both narrower and lower than the, say, Fender notion of medium jumbo - i don't know for a fact, but I would guess that part of it is they PLEK 'em, and that takes a little bit of the height as well.
3. What I did not expect but unfortunately did get:
- the electric sound is a total "meh" and does absolutely no justice to the outstanding acoustic qualities of the guitar - just too mellowed out, no punch, no magic - I put a 498T+490R combo in it, and now we're talking - that's the guitar I hear acoustically, plus the whole lot of electric mojo you want from an electric guitar;
- solderless electronics - all the pots are hard-mounted on a single pc board together with a connection block that sends and receives the signal from and to the pickups, switch and output jack, all of which have plug-ended wires fitting that framework, kinda like EMG's - the reason why i gutted it all out and had it rewired from scratch with the (non-plug-ended) replacement pickups and whatever switch, 500K pots and output jack I had in my box of parts.
In a nutshell, a great platform, but, if you share my understanding of les paul sound, be prepared to put in the time, effort and a few extra euro, if you want to really get there with it.
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