Monthly Archives: May 2021

I have a marketing/design background and man, this passive aggressive “Play Authentic” video by Gibson Guitars absolutely makes me cringe: https://youtu.be/2VgjLDX9F4o

Whilst I’m 100% sure that there’s got to be something magical about certain Gibson guitars, I can’t say that I can easily separate what I’m passionate about to how a product is marketed, or how a company is run.

The very first guitar I had in my hands back in the early 90’s in high school was a Les Paul. I’m a huge Slash fan and I’ve always loved how Les Paul guitars look. I’ve always thought that one day I would own a collection of classics. A Fender Stratocaster and Telecaster, a Gibson SG, 335 and a Les Paul.

For the past week I’ve had multiple tabs open on my browser, each one to either Gibson Les Paul guitars for sale, or Epiphone Les Paul guitars for sale, but after watching a tonne of negative Gibson quality control videos I ended up closing all those tabs and pulling the trigger on an Artist Guitars Les Paul style guitar on eBay instead!

The guitar I bought was marked as a factory second for $238 (the Epiphone, also made in China, costs $1,249). I knew it was going to have some imperfections; maybe some high frets, maybe the intonation will be out, maybe the pickups will be trash, or the action will need to be lowered (all easy things for me to address), but after watching the many videos I’ve seen on the nasty quality control at Gibson guitars I figure I could face the same issues even if I bought the real deal.

Is this Artist LP60 a Les Paul though? Nope! Will it satisfy my desire to one day own a real Gibson Les Paul, probably not, but I think it’s a good step in between. Of-course I’m already thinking about modifying the guitar; I’d love to remove the pick guard (or get a black one), swap out the pickup surrounds for black ones and get some black knobs too, but before I spend any money on it I’ll set it up right to play well; change out the strings, polish the frets, lube and (if I have to) file the nut as there’s some grabbing going on at the nut on the high strings as I can hear pinging when I’m tuning.

EDIT: I wrote a review of the guitar on the Artist web site and Artist Guitars reached out to me to see if there was any way they could do to make the problems right for me. They couldn’t give me store credit, or a discount towards my next Artist guitar, so they ended up giving me $24 in return on eBay. That’s just such awesome customer service!

2 wines in!

Made in the USA!

Installed on the Dark Night.

Really happy with these Fender Strap Blocks which prevent your strap from ever coming off your guitar. Peace of mind for cheaps at $8 a set of 4 (enough for 2 guitars!).

46… Fuck!

Less is more, or just another justification to go out and buy another guitar?!

I’ve had the Dillion Phoenix up for sale for a few weeks now. I had a starting price of $600 and a buy it now at $800 because I didn’t really want to sell it. It’s a pretty guitar. I like the look of it and for the most part it’s just been on display in my lounge room since I bought it in 2016.

One of the main reasons why I put it up for sale though is the guitar isn’t so fun to play standing up as it’s got pretty bad neck dive (when you let go of the guitar the head of the guitar dives down so you have to hold the neck up to play it), which is quite common apparently on guitars with an offset shape. The guitar is the heaviest in my collection too and that’s not great as I play standing up, sometimes for hours at a time.

The listing was up for 3 weeks before someone reached out about it. This guy wanted to come over and inspect the guitar which is a fair call, but had me a little worried for some reason as he was pretty short in his messages and I couldn’t get a read on the guy and so I started to wonder whether it would be a safe thing or not to have some random come into my house to “test my guitar”.

End of the day he was an older guy who didn’t talk much, and when I tried to chat he just couldn’t hear what I was saying, so it didn’t take me long to realise he was pretty deaf! I showed him the guitar and plugged it in for him to play with and legit he just played chords for at least 15 minutes, maybe more. He might have had frail hands as he wasn’t quite able to hold the chords down on the fretboard, but he still strummed away anyways. I wasn’t quite sure what he was doing; I’m not a guitar shop, and it only takes a few minutes to tell if an electric guitar works or not (and the guitar works perfectly fine!), but it seemed like he was just really trying to make sure he liked the guitar enough to buy it.

He ended up buying the Dillion. Turns out he’s got a huge collection of guitars, and when he saw my upside down Hendrix style Squier he scoffed at it and said he wanted to do the same but would never disrespect Jimi by using a Squier! Interesting guy and an interesting experience. I had been thinking (I mentioned it on a Monday Morning Rant a little while back) about guitarists who own a lot of guitars but can’t play well. Each to their own for sure, but it’s something I’ve been thinking about and not really a situation I want to get myself into. IE: Ultimately I respect (and envy!) a person who plays the one guitar really well, over a person who has a collection of amazing guitars and plays mediocre at best.