CheshireFrog
Well-Known Member
- Joined
- Dec 13, 2016
- Messages
- 553
- Reaction score
- 618
With the holiday weekend coming up I wasn't sure how long this would take to get here but the UPS man rang my bell just before noon today.
I have a 339 Pro, so I'm familiar with this guitar, if not this model, and it's a good thing I am because this guitar was almost unrecognizable. For starters it was as filthy as a stray dog eating a diaper. If you've ever had to clean the fuzzy grease out of a range hood, that's about the consistency of the dust that formed a uniform coating over the entire instrument. The bridge and stop bar had the kind of discoloration and oxidation that can only come from layers of sweat left unattended over time. The neck had no relief and the would have been better measured with a yardstick than micrometer. Finally, the intonation was set by someone more concerned with the patterns the saddles made than the actual sound.
Now for the good: All of this contributed to a great price, and all of this is easily fixable. Off come the strings, all of the hardware gets scrubbed, first with 00 steel wool, then 0000, then a green scrubber. Machine heads and saddles get oiled and it all gets set aside. Meanwhile the instrument gets cleaned and polished before the hardware is reinstalled. New strings, adjust the action, set the intonation and it's lie a new instrument. There was no actual damage under the dirt. The covers on the P90s have some light scratches, but new covers are cheap, and already on order.
It wasn't until after all this was completed that I tuned it and played it. All my guitars are archtops, and it's important to me that it sound good unplugged. Granted i already knew what to expect, and this guitar didn't disappoint. Then I plugged it in. My Wildkat has P90s on it, but the difference between that guitar and this one is startling. I'm not sure what accounts for that, the Wildkat has dogears, the 339 has soapbars, the Wildkat has chrome covers, the 339 has plastic covers, the Wildkat has a chambered milled body, the 339 is a more conventional archtop. Probably a combination of all the above. Whatever, the differences between the two are more than enough to justify owning both. In the military we used to have a saying: you don't really know somebody until you go camping with them. In the same way, you can audition a guitar all you want in a shop, but until you get it home and play it through equipment that you know well you really don't know how it sounds. After running this instrument through some of my favorite presets I can tell you these P90s are SWEET!
Getting everything adjusted right will surely be a work in progress for the next couple of weeks, but I can already tell this is a keeper. It'll only get better from here.
I have a 339 Pro, so I'm familiar with this guitar, if not this model, and it's a good thing I am because this guitar was almost unrecognizable. For starters it was as filthy as a stray dog eating a diaper. If you've ever had to clean the fuzzy grease out of a range hood, that's about the consistency of the dust that formed a uniform coating over the entire instrument. The bridge and stop bar had the kind of discoloration and oxidation that can only come from layers of sweat left unattended over time. The neck had no relief and the would have been better measured with a yardstick than micrometer. Finally, the intonation was set by someone more concerned with the patterns the saddles made than the actual sound.
Now for the good: All of this contributed to a great price, and all of this is easily fixable. Off come the strings, all of the hardware gets scrubbed, first with 00 steel wool, then 0000, then a green scrubber. Machine heads and saddles get oiled and it all gets set aside. Meanwhile the instrument gets cleaned and polished before the hardware is reinstalled. New strings, adjust the action, set the intonation and it's lie a new instrument. There was no actual damage under the dirt. The covers on the P90s have some light scratches, but new covers are cheap, and already on order.
It wasn't until after all this was completed that I tuned it and played it. All my guitars are archtops, and it's important to me that it sound good unplugged. Granted i already knew what to expect, and this guitar didn't disappoint. Then I plugged it in. My Wildkat has P90s on it, but the difference between that guitar and this one is startling. I'm not sure what accounts for that, the Wildkat has dogears, the 339 has soapbars, the Wildkat has chrome covers, the 339 has plastic covers, the Wildkat has a chambered milled body, the 339 is a more conventional archtop. Probably a combination of all the above. Whatever, the differences between the two are more than enough to justify owning both. In the military we used to have a saying: you don't really know somebody until you go camping with them. In the same way, you can audition a guitar all you want in a shop, but until you get it home and play it through equipment that you know well you really don't know how it sounds. After running this instrument through some of my favorite presets I can tell you these P90s are SWEET!
Getting everything adjusted right will surely be a work in progress for the next couple of weeks, but I can already tell this is a keeper. It'll only get better from here.
