My GAS a Pro-grade Instrument

[Glacies]

Glacies....if you're interested in a Carvin, a good friend here in Chicago is a huge Carvin fan, owns a few. I told her....yep...her, about your interest and she's got a all Koa DC200. Amazing guitar. Available for far less than the numbers you referenced earlier in the thread. Let me know if you're interested and I'll put you two in contact with each other.

Tio, looks great, but I think you guys have convinced me to start a little slower. I'm really interested in the S570 from Ibanez, I can find it for about $600 and from all accounts it seems to be a professional enough for me. I have put my hands on it in the store and like the feel a lot. I kind of associate Ibanez with Shreddiness, which I'm not shreddy in the least, but I seem to be able to get some great classic tones out of this. I think I might want to split the hums eventually, but I think I'll play around with it and see what I like about it. This is about half the price of the Carvin I'm interested in. Originally I was eyeing some of the JS models but I found out they were like $3k!

Nobody, of course, can tell you what guitar is going to work for you, but I say if you're playing regularly in a band, and considering the guitars you now have, you're ready for an upgrade.

And if you do go the Fender-type single coil route, you might want to consider re-doing the Epi LP in order to cover the humbucker side of things, as well as having a reliable backup guitar.

The S570 has a bucker at the bridge which seems to work for me so far (with a little tonal dialing), but I'm still interested in updating the epi. It was my first guitar, I don't think I'll ever get rid of it, and there's just something about a Les Paul to me, but the pots are seriously lacking and I think I mentioned the neck pickup is so muddy as to prevent me from really ever using it.

[Eric***]

Tio, looks great, but I think you guys have convinced me to start a little slower. I'm really interested in the S570 from Ibanez, I can find it for about $600 and from all accounts it seems to be a professional enough for me. I have put my hands on it in the store and like the feel a lot. I kind of associate Ibanez with Shreddiness, which I'm not shreddy in the least, but I seem to be able to get some great classic tones out of this. I think I might want to split the hums eventually, but I think I'll play around with it and see what I like about it. This is about half the price of the Carvin I'm interested in. Originally I was eyeing some of the JS models but I found out they were like $3k!

The S570 has a bucker at the bridge which seems to work for me so far (with a little tonal dialing), but I'm still interested in updating the epi. It was my first guitar, I don't think I'll ever get rid of it, and there's just something about a Les Paul to me, but the pots are seriously lacking and I think I mentioned the neck pickup is so muddy as to prevent me from really ever using it.

That seems like a good plan of action WRT the Ibanez. You can see if you like that and what it does well, doesn't do well, etc.

Before you do too too much with the Epi, I might recommend you just mess with the pickup height a bit. I dinked around with pickup replacement in the past and got very different sounds on an LP by just raising up the neck pickup a bit. It's entirely possible that you will want to change the pickups anyway, but it's a quick tweak that can yield surprising differences. Just screw the two screws on the side of the pickup ring clockwise to raise the pickups.