The '56 Goldtop I snagged on eBay was delivered today, and I've got much good news & a bit of bad news.

The Good News:

The guitar looks brand new, and I'm pretty sure that it's never been played. There isn't a scratch or gouge on it anywhere, and all the protective plastic is still on the guitar. The strings were all slack, and by a LOT, so I suspect this is just how it came from the factory. The setup is excellent, with a nice low action, but no buzzing. The strings are cheap 9's, but I'll put a set of D'Addario 10's on. The electronics work perfectly, and the P90's have that nice bright, snappy ring to them. Nice neck, a little bit thicker than the one on my Elitist LP Std., but not as beefy as my Dot. And it sure is pretty! See pix below.

The case it came in (Guardian; sells new on Amazon.com for $75) is quite decent, but is one of those square ones that is really better suited to a Fender guitar. The angle on the neck of the LP causes the neck to sit up off the support cross-piece, so it doesn't sit in the neck cutout and can slide back and forth. But I can always use my LP Std. case to transport it, if need be. And this case will be nice for my Nashville Tele or the Fullerton ST4, neither of which I have a case for.

The Bad News:

The guitar is clearly stamped as a factory second on the back of the headstock, and the last two numbers of the serial number have been intentionally scratched out, which is apparently what they do at the factory with seconds. This condition was NOT mentioned in the item description, and to make it worse, there were stickers intentionally placed over the "2ND" stamp and the serial number to conceal them. The "Inspected & Set-up in the USA" sticker had obviously been moved from down near the bottom of the headstock (there was adhesive residue still there) and placed over the "2ND" stamp near the top, and a paper label was placed over the scratched out serial number. Pretty disreputable, if you ask me. I've sent a message to the seller pointing these things out and asking for an explanation. We'll see what this guy has to say! Certainly shows why you need to be careful buying stuff on eBay....

Fortunately, as far as the reason for the guitar being a second, the only thing I can find is a kind of faint, wiggly crack mark in the binding in about a 3" section along the very bottom edge of the guitar. It's on the side edge, not on the top, so it's really not visible at all. I can't even get it to show in a photo. But at this point, I have to assume that's why it's a second. I'd heard that very often guitars get "seconded" for next to nothing, and this would seem to bear that out. Very minor aesthetic defect.

I've got a couple of pix below showing the back of the headstock with and without the concealing stickers, and a shot of the back of my Elitist showing where that sticker should be.

Here are the pix: