NGD: Epiphone Casino (China)

yek said:
In general: good.

Neck is a little stiff.
The nut can be lowered I think.
Pickups are fine, although I may replace them with Lollars.
Click to expand...
You might consider the Fralin hum-free P90s also. They are quite good, and they "know the words"....
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yek said:
In general: good.

Neck is a little stiff.
The nut can be lowered I think.
Pickups are fine, although I may replace them with Lollars.
Click to expand...
I have a Chinese Ibanez Jazz box and the woodwork is flawless (even thin finish) but I swapped the nut for a bone one and replaced the pots and switch. I have had a bunch of different pickups in it but that is less important for this kind of thing than your 330 tones. The main reason for the nut was to fine tune the action over the first fret and I wasn't going to do that on the plastic one. If the pots are full size Alpha I would leave them because they are pretty good these days however if they are the mini ones I would expect them to fail fairly quickly if you use them much. If you do a pickup swap pull out everything at the same time. All goes in the pickup hole on that so pretty straight forward.
 
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I had SO much fun playing this guitar tonight with the band. Just used a Plexi model, no fx and working with the vol knobs. These P90s and the “dry” tone cut through like none of my other guitars do. The controlled feedback is fun too. It definitively adds lots of vintage vibe to the overall sound. Keeper, and I even may hold off upgrading some of the hardware for now.
 
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Several years ago I wanted a semi-acoustic guitar and bought a Casino in a natural finish. I liked the P90s, but after a while I realized, that I could not really bond with the guitar and sold it. Afterward I bought a cheap Ibanez Jazz guitar with a big body (I forgot the model number), which brought me closer to the sound I was looking for, but in the end I sold it for the same reasons.
I then started a more concentrated search for the right guitar and discovered with Norimasa Yamaoka a Japanese luthier, who is specialized in semi-acoustic guitars. Those are all hand made (including the pickups) and therefore the price is a completely different universe than an Epiphone made in China.
But because I really love this guitar, I have no regrets.
 

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yek said:
I had SO much fun playing this guitar tonight with the band. Just used a Plexi model, no fx and working with the vol knobs. These P90s and the “dry” tone cut through like none of my other guitars do. The controlled feedback is fun too. It definitively adds lots of vintage vibe to the overall sound. Keeper, and I even may hold off upgrading some of the hardware for now.
Click to expand...
Fully hollow body + P90 + Marshall Plexi = greatest rock & roll rhythm chunk tone ever!
 
M just picked one up made in China ,got a good price for it ,played it in the pawn shop, sounded great with 5 strings 😀. I brought it home cleaned it up,polished the frets, new string and it’s great. Only thing for me is I play 80’s hair band stuff and sitting in from of my FM3 and monitors playing with distortion( probably because no high volume) it sounds like a tube screamer with drive all the way up , that clean sound with fuzz.
But I recorded it with a friedman and a Marshall, Sounds awesome, really cuts just right and I know the pickups are cheap. But I’m happy so far.Makes me want to play jazz, and I don’t know jazz 😂
 
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