Average Reviews:
(More customer reviews)I bought this guitar about half a year ago through amazon, shipped from basswind and brasswind, decided it was time to give it a good unbiased review now that the hype is gone.
I've been playing for 10 years, mostly hard rock and metal: Guns N' Roses, AC/DC, Metallica, Ozzy, Whitesnake, Van Halen. Not heavier than that. This guitar suits that style perfect. The pickups that come stock are excellent at distorted sounds, not so great with clean. I bought EMG 81 and 85 and did the 18 volt mod right away so can't comment much on stock pickups, which involves wiring 2 batteries in series. This helps a lot in getting cleaner tones and more headroom, you can check samples of it in [...]. I had the guitar set up as soon as it arrived, and can't comment on that either specially since it was shipped overseas after being in my brothers house quite a while,
I play Ernie Ball hybrid slinky set 0.09 -0.46 which I recommend, heavier strings for palm muting and chords, and thinner strings for fast soloing) , . This guitar sustains really well, and the grover tuners are awesome. I play this through a Marshall JCM 1959 800 modded half stack
Anyway, this guitar has good finish, not excellent, but very nice for the price. I absolutely love the feal and playability of the neck and the guitar in general. For the price I can't think of a better guitar. Its not a great overall guitar if you are planning to play other styles of music. If you're into heavier stuff including nu-metal this is your guitar. EMG active pickups are worth considering if you have the extra money, but i repeat the stock pickups are really good.
I'm comparing this to great guitars I played along the years and I repeat its hard to get this quality elsewhere at this price. If you play more classic rock I recommend a Epiphone Les Paul Standard, or an Ibanez RG which are excellent guitars as well. And you won't find better guitars in this price range than Ibanez RG or Epiphone
Plus and maybe upgrading to seymour duncan's JB and Jazz or JB and 59's or both Alnico Pro II as Slash uses on his guitars, all of these have less output, and have cleaner sounds. This is recommended if you get your distorsion from your amp. If you play a tube amp its really hard to get a clean sound with active pickups with full volume since the pickups high output pushes the preamp into distorsion. You just have to roll down the volume.
In conclusion, not a great overall sound, its REAL good at what it is meant for, the clean sound with EMG's 18V mod is pretty decent, take into account im really picky about gear. So don't be discouraged, I actually think this is a great guitar, really nice craftsmanship and playability, and it has awesome looks.
Get yourself a hardcase if you can, I recommend SKB Les Paul case U$S129, much better than the Epi case.
Good Luck in your quest
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