Despite the no-nonsense $210 price for this used, 9.2lb monster, a few squillion synapses firing in my little brain hinting at some unjustifiable "need" to own this 2010 Samick Indonesia factory-built Epiphone LP are still nothing short of an impulsive decision, no matter how you slice it. But I did it anyway. Thoughts of Andy Bell w/Ride @ Glastonbury 1994, kissing the SG1000 goodbye last year, who knows? I figured I could flip it if it turned out to be a dud.
An engineering student from Suwon selling the thing to save enough cash to buy an Edwards Explorer was happy to meet me up in Seoul and pass it on, and I think it'll stick around for the time being. Other than some hefty fretwear here and there, along with a decent-sized polyurethane crunch on the tail and on the back of the neck at about the 8th fret, it's looking and feeling alright and I've already run it through its paces to see how much midrange meat it can produce. Bridge pickup so far really honks.
Granted, I'll probably be throwing in a pair of vintage-wound Moollon VH-59s to balance out a lot of the thump the very hot humbuckies are already putting out and making the tone pots a lot more usable, but even stock it's bringing back a lot of memories of when I had an '87 Gibbo custom, for better or for worse...Just may put the ol' Phat Cat in the neck (simply because I know how good it's going to sound), and/or do an open-coil thing in the bridge for teh Pagez.
Took the cream guard off, and I simply fell in love with the boring plain maple grain under the honey burst. And lo and behold like it should, the scoliosis-inducing solid mahogany sandwich (not sure how many pieces, seems like 5 or 6 slices of wood) has got all the sustain one would expect from the primitive design.
(she/they)