Les Paul SL

Well, having successfully resisted for months (John Bollinger's video notwithstanding), Duhvoodoman's post about having gotten one pushed me over the edge... So I bought one (shipped) from GC, and today I brought it back. It's a cool little guitar in a number of ways but the bottom line was I knew that with other nicer guitars on hand I would never really play it. If I had tried it in person first, I would not have taken it home.

So here's my take, FWIW. First, it is pretty amazing for a $99 guitar - but it is, in fact, a $99 guitar. Reasonably, there's only so much you can do within that price point. One of the reasons that I was interested was the light weight, and it sure is light - the one I had weighed in at 5.5 lbs. As a result, it does feel like a toy when you pick it up (the bright colored models add to that feeling visually). The action was fine, the neck was very good, flat (would need more relief with 10's I'd guess - but it actually felt good with the 9's on it), no buzzing anywhere, and just a hint of fret edges. The nut was cut properly, but the strings were a bit high at the first fret - sanding the nut a bit would have fixed it easily enough. The bridge needed to be adjusted for intonation (which can be done using set screws at both ends of the bridge). The tuners, as mentioned by most everyone, work but are pretty flimsy feeling. The pickups are pretty low output - had to crank the amp up above the usual - but they do sound decent. It really does have it's own sound in all three positions, and in a good way. It would indeed make a nice guitar for a beginner - easy to play, decent sounding, light weight, and not a big investment if the beginner doesn't continue.

So bottom line, that was my problem - it was an OK guitar for short money, but I was never going to get the sound out of it that Bollinger did, and after carrying out the setup fixes, was I really going to play it, or would it sit in the corner? So I wiped off the finger prints, and brought it back to the local GC... That's my story - of course YMMV!

I guess you made the right choice having many guitars doesn't necessary push you to play more and if you feels it's cheap well.... I can see why some bluesman were playing old cheap japanese guitars (like Hound Dog Taylor for ex) because they was maybe not much choice at the time but right now why having thoses ????

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Originally Posted by Jipes

I guess you made the right choice having many guitars doesn't necessary push you to play more and if you feels it's cheap well.... I can see why some bluesman were playing old cheap japanese guitars (like Hound Dog Taylor for ex) because they was maybe not much choice at the time but right now why having thoses ????

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I will disagree slightly here with you Jipes. The Japanese guitars (both regular and lap steels) were hit-and-miss affairs. Certainly not top-of-the-line gits but probably at least "student quality" for a beginner or someone on a budget. The "magic" of the Japanese guitars was in their pickups and if you were lucky enough to get good pups in those gits, they snarled and growled with the best pups around. The emphasis on "snarl and growl". Same happened here in the States with Supro lap steels and their string-thru-pickups. Absolute MAGIC. Take a Supro lap steel string-thru-pup and marry that to a Japanese Teisco gold foil pup and....VOILA.....a Coodercaster.

The old Japanese Guayatone lap steels have a very good reputation as a vintage lap steel, especially depending on your style of music.

Do agree with you concerning the pickups but believe me they're not all in that great category I played numerously Japanese strat copies and none of them were really great instrument but at that time they were no alternatives either you bought an expensive one or you had to go with thoses guitars with sometimes so high action that it was barely playable.

Of course Oahu Lap steel pickups and Gold foil are exception to the rules :D