jimmarchi1's Music Gear Setup

I fell in love with this SG from the first note and had to own it. It has a big chunky neck and the body really resonates when its set-up with a rod straight neck and the action on the high side. The stock 490r neck pickup is warm and sparkly, however I was underwhelmed by the 498t at the bridge. It didn't jive with my favored amplifier, the Vox AC30. At a guitar show I swapped a pedal for an ld Gibson T-top Humbucker with pretty low DCR and installed it at the bridge. It completed the package making my SG into my favorite rock axe.

I have named this guitar El Superbeasto, but she will answer Beasto for short.

This is a Mexi-made Esquire. Swamp-ash body, maple neck, etc. Pretty much a classic 50s telecaster with 1 pickup and the esquire's wonky wiring. But the wiring scheme is part of the charm of an esquire as is the reduced string pull from just 1 pickup that makes these guitars just a touch meaner than their big brothers. This guitar has a well-applied Polyurethane white-blonde finish that is too glossy for my taste. Feels weird under my forearm. The neck is finished in vintage tinted poly and is fairly glossy, but in a good way. I never seem to stick to it even when I get sweaty.

My 3 star review is based on how I got this esquire stock. Its really a 4.5 star after some tweaking. An Angeltone 1950B pickup went in the bridge and I switched the stock steel barrels for a set of Hipshot compensated brass saddles. That seemed to bring the guitar to life plugged in. I didn't feel that the stock parts put forward its midrangey voice unplugged.

She doesn't have an official name but I often refer to her as Mary (as in Mary Kaye cosmetics, even though she is not truly Mary Kaye) or the Deathsquire (mine has a black bakelite pickguard installed by the previous owner) because she wears more black than any of my other guitars. Tré funereal, Baron Samedi!

I like everything about this amp. I don't miss the vib/trem channel, the bright switch on the normal channel brings the non-top-boost JMI brilliant channel sounds and the 'hot switch on the top boost channel is to die for. The master volume is pretty useable and the half-power switch is a huge help in these days of stage volume restrictions. What a well-though-out take on the classic design. Did I mention the gorgeous fawn Nubtex? Even the stock greenbacks sounded pretty solid, but she really came alive when I installed a G12 blue and an H30 55hz clone. That pair of speakers really makes for a larger than life vox tone, clean or dirty.

Greco also made SA branded 335 clones and they are more accurate most of the time. With Greco the SA stood for semi-acoustic, but Yamaha asserts it stands for "Super Axe", a moniker boldly emblazoned on the headstock via a les paul script silkscreen. I intend to tell you what makes this axe so super, but first lets start with the differentiations from a legit 335.

Okay, these 335 clones run below the radar and can be had way cheap. The SA-1000 is from the 70s early series. They're built well with a long neck tennon. Neck is Mahogany and the block is typically maple however the plies in the back and sides can be birch, beach, Asian spruce, maybe maple or a combination of any of the above. The SA-1000 has nice A2 PAF copies (though they have Phillips pole pieces, WTF?) that sound pretty solid. The neck has a 70s volute. The necks are chunky but have more of a mid 60s nut width so not a great guitar for fat-fingered guys. The electronics are great. Still working and sounding right after 40 to 50 years. The fretboard appears to be ebonized though it was sold as ebony. The binding does not have nibs and is very thin. The bridge is like a giant, funky abr1 clone designed by a blind man based on a verbal description of a real abr1, but its serviceable and functional. I can't tell what they finished this guitar in. Feels like some kinda toxic lacquer and not polyesther resin, though later Yamaha literature asserts they use a proprietary poly formula. Regardless, its well applied and very thin. Sadly, the pickguard is attached like an LP, not a 335. What a cop out. She also sports an oversized headstock with a few extra curves (I guess designed to avoid the Gibson lawsuits Yamaha and other Jap builders suffered anyway) and it looks plain weird at certain angles. Oh! the tuners are all metal keystone-shaped grover style. They work adequately even after many moons.

These guitars are incredibly resonant. Like really resonant, pal! The neck set is at a really good angle to allow you to get the stop bar flush with the body causing every note to transmit into the block and hollow wings. Between the toneful stock electronics and the wonderful resonance and sustain you will have to pry this "super axe" from my cold dead hands. Buy one before they go over a grand. People will catch on soon. SA-700s are cool too (rosewood board, anyone?), but they have inferior electronics with weird/weak A3 buckers.

I have named this guitar Big Red and she voiced no objections.

This is the Mick Ralphs signature model, designed by Mr Mott the Hoople himself with Fuji Gen Gakki's head luthier during a Bad Company tour of Japan in the mid 70s (or so the legend goes). Mick Ralphs, then guitarist for Bad Co, had for years been into double cut LP Jrs, but had recently gotten his first '59 burst and was diggin' it to. He musta missed the fret access and wraparound bridge because while he was in japan he came up with this hybrid design. These were mainly sold to the Japanese market and given to popular players like Mr Ralphs and Ace Frehley (who seemed to really dig this model). Greco's factory, Fuji Gen later tweaked this design and released it to the USA market as the Ibanez Artist model (one of Bob Weir's favorite solid bodies, dude still plays his Artist all the time and he has every vintage guitar on the planet).

Mine was sold to me as an MR800, the middle model between the P90 equipped 600 and the 1000, but as it turns out this is probably an MR1000. Good for me, I only paid $480 shipped from a dealer who doesn't typically handle vintage MIJ stuff. These usually go for anywhere between $750 to $1500 based on condition and the year. '77 is a really good year I gather. I feel lucky.

These guitars have a really long, really tight-fitting neck tenon that runs all the way to the end of the neck pickup cavity and shames modern Gibson craftsmanship. They feature a badass type intonatable wraparound that has an extra bolt to secure it better while changing strings and to prevent leaning and inconsistent tone. Its no tonepros locking stud, but its a reputable solution to a classic Gibson design flaw. This guitar has 2 cutaways and a 2 octave neck that required a slight adjustment of the neck pickup position fro a 59 burst making this a REALLY long tenon and a super secure neck joint. She has a 2 piece solid maple plaintop, a 1 piece Honduran mahogany back and neck, single ply binding on the body and headstock, a brazillian rosewood fingerboard with real shell inlay and nice binding with nibs and she is equipped with 4 nice 500k pots, black Sprague tone caps and a pair of Maxon made U-3000 PAF copies. They finished her in lacquer like all their LP copies of the mid 70s sporting model numbers 800 and up.

First impression... WOW!

This guitar is fairly light for a carve top ade from traditional materials. I noticed that its a little thinner than a real LP. Add in the removed chunk from the upper bout and that explains it. The neck is slimmer than I expected. More of a '66 nut width and way more in the 1960 LP Standard camp. Very comfortable though. Something about the shape and the taper. Mine needs a serious setup, but even with too much relief in the neck and funky action this guitar is a player.

What surprised me most is how good -no, GREAT- the humbuckers sound. These are killer vintage-to-moderate output PAF style pickups. Very vocal in a vowel-like sense of the word. Complex sounds roll out of this guitar that encourage you to use more and more nuance with both your hands. I am totally surprised. I was all set to put some nice Duncans in this guitar, but now I don't think I should. I can only imagine what a neck adjust will do for her, because the lack of setup is eating sustain I'm sure (and she sustains really well out of the case). This poor guitar did not enjoy her cross country trek. Sorry Old Girl, I'll get you fixed up.

The craftsmanship on this guitar is just outstanding. The binding and inlays are superbly executed. The body binding gets wider as it approaches the neck joint with thise asome zebra-stripe angle to it. Hard to describe. Just great attention to details.

One of the many nice touches is that it has a really cool heel shape that really blends into the body as the neck depth increases. Its not abrupt like an LP, its a gradual thing (a kinda curved, evolving angle? like very fibonachi spiral sort of shape). In an age where CNC routers were not prevalent (if they existed at all) the heel must have been eyeballed on every guitar after the neck was fitted. I want another one of these. Seriously.

Interestingly, this guitar came with a really nice OHSC and in the little storage compartment I found a pack of 70s or 80s Fender Super 150 strings, never opened. Weird. I'm considering framing them for shits and giggles.

Domo Arigato previous owner.

Update after a full setup: This guitar is amazing and I have named her Number One.

Update: I can't put this guitar down. It plays so well and it sounds amazing. I got curious and unscrewed the pickup rings to have a looky. They are not Maxon U-3000 humbuckers as claimed in the 77 catalog, they are the fabled "Dry Z" PAF copies that MyLP forum guys pay $1k+ for on ebay... they are really good, I get the hype.

As anyone on equipboard who follows me will know, I love double-cutaway set-necks of all kinds. I've always been partial to the old Hamer Sunburst model, but it’s a big buy in for a flat-top-set-neck electric guitar that doesn't say Gibson on it. Players who are wise know they rip and will pay a premium for a nice old one... when you can find one that hasn't been fucked with too badly.

Now without further adieu, here’s another rambling off-model vintage guitar CSI: So I saw this Washburn Falcon (billed as an '84) on Reverb. All the wing series Washburns of the 70s and 80s I knew about were bolt ons or neck thru… which is cool. I still want a 70s vintage white Eagle like Nancy Wilson from Heart used to play. But apparently in the 80s Washburn switched manufacturing to Matsumoku (wing series guitars were Japanese made during the height of MIJ greatness but with original designs they were meant to give Gibson and Hamer a run for their money, literally, as they were cheaper, but really well made at a number of small Japanese shops). At the time of the Matsumoku change the Falcon model became a glue in 3 piece mahogany neck with a mahogany body, rosewood board and flat maple top as opposed to a 5 piece mahogany and maple neck thru with swamp ash wings.

Mine has a lovely reddish tobacco burst over some beautifully flamed maple. They stuck with their Hamer sustain-block bridge copy that they were using in the 70s. Its a huge chunk of brass in the fender hardtail/string-thru-body style with heavy duty brass saddles and a G&L-ish set screws to lock the saddles together side-to-side. The pickups don't appear to be original on mine (the originals woulda been nothing special) and may be 80s Dimarzio super distortions. We shall see when I open her up. Otherwise she is stock.

Right out of the case this guitar sounds awesome for hard rock leads (though it fails to clean up well with my volume knobs... its not muddy, just SOOOO much output compared to my other humbucker axes). She is in need of a neck adjust and new strings, but even with a little too much relief and worn out 9 gauges she is a joy to play. I will probably change strings, raise the plain string action and tweak the neck back a hair later today. Did I mention this guitar is light like an SG or Jr? Well it is, but its still has that maple top, snappy attack thing going, though to a lesser extent than my 2 carve tops.

Medium to Large C shaped neck. Comfortable nut width (though it doesn't feel as wide as a 50s/modern Gibson or as thin as a 60s one, must be a wonky Japanese metric thing). The sustain on this guitar is just fabulous. You get under a note and the top of your bend just hangs for days even bone clean. Mine has 5 ply binding around the top and fretboard that is really well done. I expected this guitar to be a polyester finish, but after feeling her in my hands I did the lacquer test... as it turns out the thing is sprayed in glossy nitro and its a really well done spray job at that. My 335 copy is a Matsumoku guitar from this era too and those guys were just killin' it with their lutherie skills.

I am thinking of putting a Duncan pearly gates in the neck (I DO NOT like the enck pickup, mushy and boomy) and then trying out another Duncan 59/custom hybrid at the bridge to split the difference between 80s hotrod humbucker and vintage complexity. My 2 gripes are the lack of fret nibs on the neck binding and the fact that it has a recessed tele style jack and I really like to use L-ends on my Gibsony guitars. Oh well. I could change it to an LP or football plate if the jack cup ever works its way loose. If I had designed this guitar I woulda done a top-mounted SG style jack but I am partial to those.

These are a deal and mine is just as good as any Hamer Sunburst I have considered buying and the top is flamier and the binding is nicer. Hell, having neck binding at all is a plus... a basic sunburst had no binding anywhere, each layer of binding was an upcharge.

If you can find one of these rare old Washburns, snap it up at the lowest price you can negotiate and treasure her always.

Okay, I got this guitar off the interweb based on its looks. I had played one and really dug one in a store but wouldn't pay the asking price.

Features an unbound ebony fretboard without position markers, mahogany back and neck, unbound maple top, brushed nickel hardware, 490R and 490T pickups and grover rotamatics. Finished in a satiny metallic pewter lacquer all over the damn guitar and even the pickup rings have some silver going.

First off, what a glam rock looker. 100 points for style. Okay, moving on. She has a nice rounded 50s neck profile. Points there. She's not particularly heavy for an LP, more points. Played great out of the case? Check. More points. Phenomenal sustain and a balanced tone unplugged? WOW this is on uncharacteristically great stock Gibby! Wrong. While I have nothing against the 490 alnico humbuckers (I hate the 498T, but the 490R is pretty okay and the 490T can sound cool, if modern), they sound awful in this guitar. Sterile, boring, all wrong for a Gibson geared towards a strong upper midrange. The Neck pickup is a bit boomy and masks the best frequencies this guitar projects acoustically and the bridge lacks any bass response and is a mess of upper mid snarl without any genuine sparkle clean or dirty. You could sue this guitar stock to be in an Nickelback tribute band assuming you had a stock mesa triple-rec. UGH! Not me at all.

Fortunately I have A couple different humbuckers sitting around. I am thinking a Burstbucker 2 in the neck and a Duncan 59 custom hybrid to start. Keep things hotter-than-vintage to match her hot looks, but get some seriously mismatched coils going to reveal the guitar's voice. The finish is thin and well executed, the guitar resonates wonderfully... I may need to put some bourns 500k pots in too. we'll go lazy to start....

Overall I recommend this particular les paul as a unique spin on the tired, old formula that is dazzling to behold in the right lighting.... not for stodgy, conservative types though. Sadly for those of you shopping, the good version (this all silver one) was only made for a year or two and is apparently quite rare. Go figure. Guess I was being a dick when I lowballed the dealer. I have named mine Silver Bullet and will probably keep her after I perform a 'lil surgery.