Cheapie SG review demo & thoughts on SGs vs LPs

[Naillerz78]

@Pekbro

Yeah Epiphone pro buckers are great value pickups.
I had a few I picked up cheap in a guitar shop closedown sale. Like $50 a pair.

Sounded very good the full sized HBs.

Unfortunately I tried to uncover one .. and drove a screwdriver straight through one of the coils.

So I removed it, now I have a single coil replacement humbucker sized pickup ,haha.

Might try installing one day out of interest . They have alnico mags yeah

[Uncle E]

Sometimes you can find people selling Epiphone Elitist pickups for around $50 for the pair. Those are made in the US and sound excellent.

[tapper mike]

I'm still playing my Samick Fastback after all these years. It doesn't hold a candle to my standards or my custom LP. Still I find the tone better than the Sire Carlton L7 or the other knock offs such as the HB Series et all.

I think if I were to get another knock off to replace it then I'd opt for a Sawtooth Americana Vudu
Mostly because It's all mahogany for that custom tone and it's got a top load Floyd Rose

The first Zepplin album featured Jimmy Page playing a Les Paul Custom Black Beauty with Bigsby. Granted he had to retune the damn thing after every take because Bigsby. Those conventional Floyd Rose trem systems ruin the tone of a Les Paul due to the routing. I think the Alex Lifeson Les Paul Signature is crap and you'd never get those classic rush LP custom all mahogany tones out of it. That guitar was stolen and from then on he played a Standard Les Paul

[guitarzan]

My Epiphone FB720 pickups are already here and they look to be genuine – looks like the proper nickel silver baseplates engraved with the “designed by Epiphone USA” logo and has all the proper RoHS stickers and the part number stickers, has the Epiphone quick connect plugs — I seriously doubt anyone would go to those extremes to counterfeit Epiphone pickups that sell for less than $30/pair.

I did more reading and these are widely regarded as being amongst the very top Firebird pickups available, often surpassing top custom winder offerings in the opinions expressed in several online posts from various forums and reviews — what a deal!!!

In an earlier post I said all that would be needed to mount them to my SG is a Batwing pickguard cut for P90s, but that would only work if you used Mini Humbucker surrounds (which it would look stupid to have surrounds on top of a big pickguard IMHO), but the pickguard I have around here somewhere was custom cut to fit Firebird or Mini Humbuckers directly (without surrounds), so I hope I can find it. It wasn’t that expensive to have made but it would be an added hassle to have to get another cut, and the guy that made it doesn’t seem to be on eBay anymore (though there are plenty of other places to get one custom cut if I had to).

[Naillerz78]

I'm still playing my Samick Fastback after all these years. It doesn't hold a candle to my standards or my custom LP. Still I find the tone better than the Sire Carlton L7 or the other knock offs such as the HB Series et all.

Interesting. Why the fastback? What is it about it.. is it all stock or better pups in it?
Never heard of those most google,

[tapper mike]

Mostly because it didn't sell during my great herd culling a few years ago and I dont have anymore LP's those were long gone when I bought it.

I bought it new and it sat on the wall at my local music store for a time. The shape is oddly feminine but it's offset design makes it easier for weight distribution. The word I heard at the time was... Gibson had signed a deal to make Epiphones at Samick. They thought it looked and sounded better than the Epi's Gibson wanted to produce. Gibson did produce quite a number of Epi's at Samick for a few years but then increasing costs of production pushed epiphone into cheaper suppliers such as Cort.

The Samick plays great still. It's better than any knockoff LP standard including Epiphone I've ever heard but a far cry from a Gibson. I don't take too much stock in Epiphone even though I do recognize that the quality has dramatically improved in the last ten years.

I was unimpressed with later Samick LP's such as Avion that looked the part and lost the tone.

The only other LP type guitar I really liked was the washburn falcon/hawk wing. Didn't like the hard D shape or the brass nut.
but the action was perfect.

[Naillerz78]

Sounds alright here


I had an Avion model once, same kinda sound,
It’s ok but.. yeah not my bag ovs.

Snap. I never liked epiphone LPs in particular either.
I think it’s the big necks and big frets combo,
But .. even with pickup upgrades they are missing heaps compared to Gibsons. I dunno why,

Same scale same pickups.. must be the wood and the neck I’m guessing . Gibsons have a lovely fingerboard and fretwork in comparison to Epiphone’s. It’s a different league playing and tones experience, epis just sound weak and muddy for me always. Haven’t played a newer one tho tbh, always wayyy overpriced and over rated imo.
I read somewhere Gibsons used a slightly different scale length to epiphone also, weird,

Their higher end Hollowbodies are great tho. Casinos, Sheratons, so many cool versions.
They had a “swingster” model a few years back - was like a Gretsch. Tron type splittable pups and an awesome bigsby style Trem.
Big ass body also. A great rockabilly guitar and alternative to a G / Electromatic.
The cheaper gretsches are a bit like the epiphone Les paul. Very hit and miss to me,
Had a Electromatic double jet once like a Malcolm young style. Quite unusual sounds out of those.

I’d buy a E Swingster for those rockabilly retro tones. And to play The Cult riffs,

Must do that someday if I see one floating around at a good price love that whammy bar.

[Uncle E]

There's a cool mod where people convert the regular Emperor Regent into rockabilly guitars. That model has a bigger body than the Swingster, more like a Gretsch 6120:

[tapper mike]

So someone mentions PRS. Love Santana don't love Santana's PRS tone. Don't love PRS tone. Love PRS body shape when it's reasonable. Don't love PRS necks.

Have a PRS copy. Only ever liked two PRS copies. One I own.

Back in the 90's lesser known japanese guitar and electronics company named Vesta was producing PRS licensed copies (Or so the sales guy told me) it was a 25.5 scale length 22 fret with a slim c profile neck and a 12" radius. God that thing played like honey The pickups were lame though. If I were smart I would have bought it and installed some decent pups.

The one I own is a semi made for Raven West Guitars


It's a semi hollow made before PRS was selling semi's and hollow bodies. The center block only goes from the bridge to the back it's not a transverse and not an all the way through 24 frets (which I hate) and a 25.5 scale length. Very thin neck 12 inch radius and a fairly thin neck width. I think it would be great if I just got a little more beef in the pups.

I think I paid $350USD used for it.

[tapper mike]

Sounds alright here


I had an Avion model once, same kinda sound,
It’s ok but.. yeah not my bag ovs.

Avions sound like EVH Wolfgangs.
Funny thing about that. I always thought Samick Blues Scareno's TV20's were the precursors to Wolfgangs.