Another Agile on Order....

[FrankenFretter***]

I went with the black case for $10 less, but now that I see that pretty pink blanket that comes with the brown, I wish I'd thrown down that extra ten spot. Very nice, DVM. Any plans to mod her, or will you leave her as is?

[duhvoodooman***]

From all I've read & the photos I've seen, I expected the AL-3000 to be gorgeous, beautifully constructed & a great value. But I wasn't expecting this $60 Douglas case (MIC) to be equally impressive, in its own way. The case that came with my Epi Elitist LP is a very nice one, but I have to give this one the edge. Very convincing rendering of the classic brown Gibson LP case....

[sunvalleylaw]

A hearty congrats DVM! It looks beautiful!!

[Spudman***]

Cool guitar Voodoo. I like the position markers a lot. I'm real curious what it weighs when you get the chance. But what I really want to know is whether or not that plaid couch is in the man room?

[msteeln]

I'm real curious what it weighs when you get the chance.

They have a beautiful 'chambered' LP 2900 that I'm sure should be mine.

[duhvoodooman***]

....I'm real curious what it weighs when you get the chance. But what I really want to know is whether or not that plaid couch is in the man room?

1) 9.5 lbs.
2) No, that couch is in our family room.

[oldguy]

I really like like that basic black w/ jewelry look, Vood. Sexy guitar!
(If I ever get time enough from work, I'll post up some pics of my new one!)

[duhvoodooman***]

Not a proper review, but thought I'd just add a few comments after having the guitar for a bit over a week now:

Not that it's even close to being the most important thing, but I'm really impressed by the good looks and fit & finish aspects of this guitar. Really quite visually stunning, especially considering its sub-$400 price tag. Now on to the more critical stuff....

This is definitely one sweet playing guitar! I love this wide-profile neck, which is also quite slim, depth-wise. Pretty close to a "60's profile" on a Gibson LP, from what I remember. I have a pretty good-sized mitt, so the extra bit of width of the neck makes the fingering very comfortable.

The guitar is also very well set up, overall. Nice low action, very easy to play fast (well, at least as fast as I can play!) There is a very slight bit of string buzz back near the nut on a couple of strings, and sighting down the neck shows no discernible relief, so I think a small truss rod adjustment is probably in order. I think I'll wait until the weather warms up a bit more before doing that, though. This time of the year here in upstate NY, the temps and humidity swing around pretty wildly from day to day, as the cold, dry northern and warm, wet southern air masses duke it out for meteorological supremacy. I'd like a little more consistency in the ambient air before I make the adjustment.

The controls are smooth and solid feeling, and work flawlessly. I haven't popped the cavity covers in the back to look at them yet, but the product blurb at Rondo says that these are upgraded controls, and I wouldn't dispute that at all.

The one weak area of this guitar is the neck pickup. Though the bridge pickup sounds quite good, the neck definitely tends to muddiness, to my ear. So I've decided to make a change there. Taking the cue from some of Bloozcat's excellent info in that "Authentic PAF Clones" thread, I've been in contact with Kevin Taylor at Guitarforce Pickups re: a set of vintage-voiced humbuckers to replace the stock p'ups. Looks like I'll be going with a slightly overwound version of his Vintage '57 model in the bridge (Alnico 2 magnets), and a Lord of the Blues Alnico 4 type pickup for better clarity at the neck position. And he's still running the special $125 price for a set (not including covers or S&H) for MLP forum members. I joined over there a couple of days ago....

So to summarize, I'm extremely pleased with the guitar overall. Just amazing quality and value at this modest price point! And when I get a new set of p'ups in it and tweak that truss rod, it should damn near reach perfection!

[FrankenFretter***]

Not a proper review, but thought I'd just add a few comments after having the guitar for a bit over a week now:

Not that it's even close to being the most important thing, but I'm really impressed by the good looks and fit & finish aspects of this guitar. Really quite visually stunning, especially considering its sub-$400 price tag. Now on to the more critical stuff....

This is definitely one sweet playing guitar! I love this wide-profile neck, which is also quite slim, depth-wise. Pretty close to a "60's profile" on a Gibson LP, from what I remember. I have a pretty good-sized mitt, so the extra bit of width of the neck makes the fingering very comfortable.

The guitar is also very well set up, overall. Nice low action, very easy to play fast (well, at least as fast as I can play!) There is a very slight bit of string buzz back near the nut on a couple of strings, and sighting down the neck shows no discernible relief, so I think a small truss rod adjustment is probably in order. I think I'll wait until the weather warms up a bit more before doing that, though. This time of the year here in upstate NY, the temps and humidity swing around pretty wildly from day to day, as the cold, dry northern and warm, wet southern air masses duke it out for meteorological supremacy. I'd like a little more consistency in the ambient air before I make the adjustment.

The controls are smooth and solid feeling, and work flawlessly. I haven't popped the cavity covers in the back to look at them yet, but the product blurb at Rondo says that these are upgraded controls, and I wouldn't dispute that at all.

The one weak area of this guitar is the neck pickup. Though the bridge pickup sounds quite good, the neck definitely tends to muddiness, to my ear. So I've decided to make a change there. Taking the cue from some of Bloozcat's excellent info in that "Authentic PAF Clones" thread, I've been in contact with Kevin Taylor at Guitarforce Pickups re: a set of vintage-voiced humbuckers to replace the stock p'ups. Looks like I'll be going with a slightly overwound version of his Vintage '57 model in the bridge (Alnico 2 magnets), and a Lord of the Blues Alnico 4 type pickup for better clarity at the neck position. And he's still running the special $125 price for a set (not including covers or S&H) for MLP forum members. I joined over there a couple of days ago....

So to summarize, I'm extremely pleased with the guitar overall. Just amazing quality and value at this modest price point! And when I get a new set of p'ups in it and tweak that truss rod, it should damn near reach perfection!

Good review, DVM. If you pop the control cavity cover, you should see Alpha pots in there (500k all around). Maybe you can identify those caps. My short vision isn't great, but at least I can tell they're not the cheapie ceramics.

I'm quite interested to know how you like the new pickups. I decided to go with GFS VEH (Vintage Exta Hot) pu'ps for my AL3000, but Guitar Fetish accidentally sent two neck pickups. They're sending out a bridge pickup today, so it looks like I'll have an extra neck pickup laying around.

I agree with you about the neck sounding a bit muddy. I do like the stock bridge pickup quite a bit, though.

I'm also a member at MLP. It's not as cozy as The Fret, but it's a good place to learn things if you're relatively new at LP ownership, like I am. Maybe I'll see you there!

[Bloozcat]

BTW, DVM; I was in a discussion on pickup magnet swaps at MLP and one of the posters there tried A-4's in both the neck and bridge positions in a pair of Duncan Seth Lovers. He said he liked the bridge for rhythm, but found it too bright for lead in his guitar. So, he kept the A-4 in the neck and swapped the bridge A-4 out for an A-2. He said it's now balanced with the right tone on each pickup. He was having a slight muddiness problem with the neck PU as well, which is what prompted him to try the magnet swaps.

[duhvoodooman***]

BTW, DVM; I was in a discussion on pickup magnet swaps at MLP and one of the posters there tried A-4's in both the neck and bridge positions in a pair of Duncan Seth Lovers. He said he liked the bridge for rhythm, but found it too bright for lead in his guitar. So, he kept the A-4 in the neck and swapped the bridge A-4 out for an A-2. He said it's now balanced with the right tone on each pickup. He was having a slight muddiness problem with the neck PU as well, which is what prompted him to try the magnet swaps.

Cool. That's guy's experience is right in line with Kevin's recommendation, then.

[sunvalleylaw]

That is very interesting DVM and Bloozcat. I had been thinking that when I do get one, I might like to swap in Tone2theBone's old Dimarzio Virtual Hot PAF bridge pup in, and get a P90 for the neck. I would guess a good P90 would clear up neck muddiness, but now I wonder if I would bother switching out the bridge. Any idea how the one that comes with the guitar might compare to my PAF?

[duhvoodooman***]

That is very interesting DVM and Bloozcat. I had been thinking that when I do get one, I might like to swap in Tone2theBone's old Dimarzio Virtual Hot PAF bridge pup in, and get a P90 for the neck. I would guess a good P90 would clear up neck muddiness, but now I wonder if I would bother switching out the bridge. Any idea how the one that comes with the guitar might compare to my PAF?

I would expect the stock Agile pickup to be a little less hot (i.e. lower output, lower resistance) than the DiMarzio. I measured the DC resistance on the Agile bridge p'up to be about 8.2K; I think the Virtual Hot PAF runs a little over 9K. Not a big difference....

BTW, if you want a P90 that fits a humbucker routing, here ya go:

SD Phat Cat

[Hardass blues]

I currently have 2 SX t-models and am really happy with them. They were on the same pages at Rondo music. I own many guitars including a 52 reissue P.R.S. a few gibsons ect... I was looking at the agile too. The Sx I have are good over all on the body finsih and fit. The only must have to change are the tuners. The stock pickups are ok. I have a sunburst model that I put a set of GFS Lil' Punchers in (with a Sprague .22 orange drop cap,2 500k push pulls for splitting and am very happy with the results. I truly went low budget ( i have as much into the pickups and wiring mod as i do in the guitar) on all of it and couldn't be happier. The other one is white with a p-90 and a typical single both stock from SX and sounds great just need to replace the tuners. Overall I recommend them highly for the price you can't beat it. The gibsons these days are crazy and fenders prices are rising. I am interested in the Squires with the Toneriders I keep hearing about though and, of course await your opinion on the Agile.

LOL! Had to edit this as I just read your review. Excellent. I was wondering what the controls looked like also. I have a hard time believeing "YOU" didn't open up that cavity cover! LOL! By the way still lovin' my Zonkin' yello screamer. Thanks again,John Henry

[duhvoodooman***]

Here's a clip I recorded with the Agile AL-3000, bridge pickup, into POD Farm v.1.11 on my PC, then recorded with Audacity using the PC's stereo mix as the input. The POD Farm set-up was Line 6 Noise Gate --> Tube Drive --> Plexi Jump Lead --> Line 6 Compressor --> Line 6 Reverb Processor on "Medium Hall". Speaker emulation was a 4x12 cab w/ '96 Celestion Vintage 30's mic'ed off axis with an SM57.

The selection is the main theme in Joe Bonamassa's Django, which I really love and doesn't contain anything very fast, so I can actually keep up. Getting the bends to sound sweet & clean is the toughest part for me. Besides the obvious difference in the skill level of the player (!!), the tone here is much rawer than Joe's, because I wanted to show off how much cut the bridge pickup has on tap.

http://www.box.net/shared/a3y9fbaaso

[Blaze]

You got that Django theme right on Duhv..

Sounds pretty good but i d prefer you plugged the Agile straight in an amp ,no Pod with your sm 57 to get the real thing ..Just my 2 cents..

[duhvoodooman***]

Sounds pretty good but i d prefer you plugged the Agile straight in an amp ,no Pod with your sm 57 to get the real thing ..

Yeah, I agree with you. I used the POD Farm software because it's so quick & convenient. This was just something I just whipped off in a few minutes between dinner and buckling down to work on my income taxes!

[player***]

http://www.fralinpickups.com/humbuckers.aspwas going to suggest these
but sounds like you have it covered well already.know someone replacing Humbucker pups with their Hum -cancelling P -90's listed here although like the PAF's myself.check out the video's

[duhvoodooman***]

I ended up ordering a set of the Guitarforce "Lord of the Blues" humbuckers, based upon further e-mail exchange with Kevin Taylor re: the kinds of music I play and the amps I use. Bloozcat sure loves his LotB set, so I expect I will, too. Kevin said about 3 weeks lead time, so should receive them by mid-month. The discount for MyLesPaul.com forum members was (and still is, AFAIK) in effect, so instead of $110 piece, I paid $125 for the pair. Also got a set of brushed nickel covers, so with those + shipping cost, the whole thing came to $162.50. Assuming they're as good as everyone says, that's a real bargain for handwound pickups....