Brand Names

[Dan]

I dont see the point in buying a £800-£1000 Gibson guitar, when you can buy a near equivalent epiphone for half that. And then again, i could buy a guitar at a THIRD of the epiphone price and get the same, if not better quality guitar.

Currently, im playing on a Vintage ( no name ) SG. At the shop, i played, what i think was a Gibson SG standard and thought yeah thats nice. And i lifted down an SG Special and thought hmmm not as good. I then lifted down an Epiphone SG Standard at half the price, and got the same sustain and better playability than the Gibson. After this, i lifted down the Vintage and i thought at first, "never heard the name, look at the price, must be ****" I rang out that first chord and was stunned at the sweetness. This guitar cost £149. It plays like a Gibson. It feels like a Gibson. It LOOKS like a Gibson. But its a fraction of the cost.

Theres no cutbacks. Finish runs all the way up the neck onto the headstock. Chrome hardware. Sweet looking knobs. Excellent pickups. A lovely rosewood fretboard with MOP block inlays. It is an amazingly sweet guitar. Vintage seems to be a popular make for guitarists looking a good guitar for a disgraceful price. They were selling Les Pauls and Flying V's as well. Has anyone heard of them in the UK?

I actually went round to the shop yesterday, just browsing, and i picked up what i thought was a Jackson, and it turned out to be a Vintage. Same headstock. Same body design. It played amazing. Price tag : £200. I dont know what these guys are doing, but these are dirt cheap guitars that will keep up with the brand names. Sorry about the rant

[Guest AlexVDL]

Check out the les paul quilt top and flame top copies by Agile at www.rondomusic.com

I can't believe how they get the price so low... they look very very nice... finish looks like tokai quality.

To bad they don't sell those guitars here in Europe, and rondomusic don't sell internationally

[GEdwardJones]

Rondo is one of my favorite sites. I was thinking about getting one of those blue quilt LPs for myself for Christmas. But that amberburst flame is UNREAL.

[Brian]

Word is over on the Les Paul forum that the brand "Orville" is as good if not better than a standard Les Paul when it comes to clone's. The only difference is of course the electronics need to go. On the plus side the constuction is tops

[GEdwardJones]

Y'know, someone who will not be named ('cos Kirk knows who he is ) once blamed me for his GAS. Back in my Ibanez fetish days when everyone else was drooling over Jems I just wanted RGs because I could take them, paint them, hack them up, use them to discipline the dog, whatever and not feel bad because they were *CHEAP* (at the time I started buying them a used RG5xx or 7xx cost less than $300 WITH case). I think between that and my fiance' (who thinks that the coolest thing in the world is when I take a guitar and make it "mine") I really have no need for an exspensive guitar or paying out the booty for a "name."

Seriously, just give me a decent quality guitar to start and it WILL get used one way or another.

[jeremywills]

umm im just lucky to have a guitar of any quality

just kidding, no some of the best stuff is no name bargain basebment, aka my samick lp copy, wich is basically the epi copy, samick makes the epi for gibson and its the same thing, i think like one out of every 20 probably gets thier own name stamped on it instead and they cut the headstock slighty different, im just guessing but otherwise, its just like a epi, the pickups and the hardware are from the same stockpile, and the only other noticeable difference is the cutway is slightly changed, but other than that, its a great korean piece of wood, and for alot less than the epi, so i took a chance on it and next to my spare parts fender its my other favorite

jeremy

[Guest AlexVDL]

Word is over on the Les Paul forum that the brand "Orville" is as good if not better than a standard Les Paul when it comes to clone's. The only difference is of course the electronics need to go. On the plus side the constuction is tops

Yeah, I have see lot's of them on the Japanese sites. Word is that Japan wanted to build their own Gibson, so they would have to pay all the shipping costs. Gibson agreed and they sent over the original plans. But the Japanese couldn't put the name Gibson on the headstock, so it became Orville (after Orville Gibson). Somewhere in the 90's Orville had to stop making guitars, but the clever bastards just named it Epiphone Japan. So With Epiphone Japan you had the same guitar as an Orville. But now Gibson said that Epiphone Japan had to stop producing guitars...

What do we see now... Gibson comes out with the new Epiphone USA Elite. They're the same as Epiphone Japan!! And what... they are twice as expensive!!!

I smell something fishy around here

[Stratmaster]

I've seen a lot of players make a lot of different tuneage out of the same axe, it sounded like 6 different guitars to me.

I guess what I'm sayin is I hang out with a bunch of players and each one has his own style, one of the biggest factors in playin is of course your own fingers. You can hand the same guitar over and over to different people and keep it hooked up to the same rig, one guy might make it sound like SRV all bluesy n stuff while the next makes it sound like total crap.

As long as there setup proper I fell like the quality is nothing more than the details bein taken care of in the building. I'm tired of those people who think a $2500 Les Paul standard is the bomb. It ain't (IMHO)