voidfucker's Reviews

Not an average Gibson

Found one of these in a pawn shop for dirt cheap. The vibrola stays in tune wonderfully, and the guitar feels very nice ergonomically. The neck isn't thin, but also doesn't have that baseball bat thickness some Gibsons do. The bridge humbucker sounds wonderful in full and split modes, which surprised me considering the ceramic magnet. The neck P90 has just enough single coil glassiness for my tastes, with a healthy dose of midrange fatness.

I primarily play stoner rock, blues, and related genres but this guitar seems best suited to cleaner and lightly overdriven playing styles. I find myself playing jazzy chord shapes on it for some reason. The neck does feel great for playing big fat chords all over the neck. Tonally, the bridge pickup has an upper midrange focus and responds wonderfully to playing dynamics despite the scorching hot output. Single coil mode sounds almost like a tele bridge pickup, maybe a little fatter. Plenty of spank in this setting. The neck P90 seems to have a fairly flat response. Not necessarily a bad thing, but not what I expected. It spits out whatever tone you put into it/run this guitar through, and will reward artful use of playing dynamics even more than the bridge p/u.

Honestly, my only gripe with this guitar is that in humbucker mode, the bridge and neck pickup are rather imbalanced in terms of volume. It's something I've learned to work around. It isn't a huge deal to me, but it is something to expect.

The overall construction feels very solid (on that note, this is not a semi-hollow. The F holes are purely cosmetic). I haven't had any issues with this guitar so far, even though it was purchased used at a pawn shop. The finish has no visible flaws from the factory, the guitar stays in tune, the pots & controls feel very sturdy. Id be surprised if any issues popped up with this guitar for a very long time. And somehow I moved from .011 roundwounds to 0.012 flats without needing to adjust its action or intonation (weird, I know). The guitar has no neck dive issues, and has a good in-between sort of weight. I don't like light guitars in my hands like Strats, as they feel like toys. At the same time, some of the thicker Les Paul bodies can feel like a burden at times. This guitar finds a comfortable middle ground instead.

You can certainly get Les Paul-like sounds out of it, but this isn't a guitar I would purchase blindly. You really need to play one to see if this guitar speaks to you personally, because there's no guitar I've played that is quite like it. It's truly its own thing, for better or worse. If you see one, give it a try. You might fall in love like I did.