Help t-rey pick a Les Paul.

[NoLA-Riffft]

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[t-rey]

Yeah - finding something local would be ideal, but that's probably not feasible. The Japanese guitars have a really solid reputation for being consistent, which makes me feel better than buying a used studio or standard sight unseen.

[Mudfuzz]

In most Japanse copies, the pickups are a bit shitty. In some they're good to awesome. Don't worry about it, worst case scenario that's an easy fix.

Japanese Epis are good to excellent, so if you find one that you like at a fair price, go for it.

That's my 0.02.

in most maybe… Burny pickups though are rather good, [and 80's-90's burny guitars are sick awesome] I like them enough to have bought a few on ebay to put in other guitars.

[braaandooon]

I really like some of the japanese pickups. I'm a really big fan of the maxon pups, really dig the pu-2's for humbuckers, moderate output, and beefy.

My favorite though are the super 6 single coils that came in early 80's ibanez roadstars. Those fuckers scream. They read at 17k and raunch up nicely. Trying to find some for my sunn mustang but no luck so far.

[Kacey Y]

Just wanted to let you know Trey, I got my Greco LP in today and didn't have to pay any additional duties.

[t-rey]

Huzzah! How do you like it so far?

[Kacey Y]

Huzzah! How do you like it so far?

Diggin it, but I will probably replace the pickups. They have that typical 70's low output, more treble focused tone to them. Would be killer if I was playing classic rock through a vintage Marshall. I'm probably going to throw something more high output in there, but I'm still playing around with it. As far as the feel and the look, out of sight my man.

[t-rey]

Glad to hear it. I'm still very much on the hunt. I've never had anything with low output humbuggies before, but if I'm going to budget a pickup swap anyhow, I might as well try something with them to see if I like them.

POST PICS

[Kacey Y]

Glad to hear it. I'm still very much on the hunt. I've never had anything with low output humbuggies before, but if I'm going to budget a pickup swap anyhow, I might as well try something with them to see if I like them.

POST PICS

I'm giving them a fair shot before I change anything. The only low output pickups I ever had before this was on an old SG I used to have and I liked it 1000x more when I changed them to just basic Seymour Duncan PAF style pickups. I might just throw some GFS Fat Pats in there or something, I dunno yet.

Here's some pics...

[Jäke]

I'm pretty sure my Greco's pups are on the low side, but it's sort of a blessing since my current setup can get fairly unruly with high output pups.

[t-rey]

Damn, that's a snazzy beast.

[samzadgan]

That is a beautiful looking guitar...did anyone mention Ishibashi? that place has so much cool stock of guitars, and by all accounts they are amazing to deal with.

There's a lot of black beauties on there, but i think the gibson ones are above your limit...but they have so much more stuff. I second the Yamaha ones, Yamaha just make great fuckin guitars...but greco and the others are also pretty cool.

check out this site, this guy is in the UK, and has some nice stuff, but also has a wealth of knowledge on the site too...
http://www.japanguitars.co.uk/index.htm

[t-rey]

I will have a look at the Ishibashi site. However, turns out the budget is a bit more than expected, so I've been looking at mid 80's-early 90's Gibson customs or standards, and also some historic reissues (R# guitars) from the 2000's are falling in the range as well.

Not that this is TGP or anything, but does anyone have an opinion on Customs vs R# guitars?

[Ancient Astronaught]

Older is better IMO when it comes to gibsons. Mid 80's to early 90's were the last of their hay day to the best of my knowledge, if you can get a Custom or Standard from that time frame you should be golden.

[t-rey]

Thanks, Skip. From just looking at pictures online it seems like you're right - the post-Norlin guitars through about 1995 look like better quality instruments. The Historic Reissues are exceptions to this, but for 3k+ they fucking better be.

As it stands right now I'm torn between three options: Black/Gold custom from whatever year I can afford (typically late 80's), Tobacco Burst Standard from the early 90's, or a Goldtop R7 or R8 which pop up quite a bit in my budget (dunno why the goldtops are cheaper than the others...)

Some of the guitars I've seen say they have the 490/498 pickup combo in them - are they pretty decent pickups?