I just put down my Leo Jaymz Single Cut Deluxe.
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I bought the guitar from Amazon for $180 as a wall hanger. The guitar seems well built, I’m not sure what woods were used and I really don’t care, but it seems stable and stays in tune now (more on that later). The finish is flawless, yea I know that’s a print on the top, but the binding is done well, there’s no blems or fisheye in the finish and the overall look of the instrument is very nice.
That is where it stopped. While it was playable out of the box, it was loaded with uneven frets and cheap hardware everywhere. The pickups weren’t too bad but not great either and the pots felt cheap. It did not stay in tune as the tuners were sloppy.
Exactly what I expected for a $180 guitar.
Wall hanger or not I decided to use it as a project guitar. I completely stripped the guitar down to just the body. I started a fret level but came to quickly realize that the fretwire was soft, and more than a few were loose. The fretboard was also very rough and uneven. I pulled the frets, leveled the fingerboard, and refretted with Stew Mac medium tall frets. I added a Tusq nut for good measure.
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I replaced the bridge and tailpiece with Tone Pros hardware, added Grover locking tuners and threw in a set of EMG 85s that I already had sitting on a shelf.
I’m so glad I put the time into this guitar, it plays great and is a real head turner. It ends up in some of our sets, I break it out for Grand Funk’s ‘American Band’ and Skynyrd’s ‘Sweet Home Alabama’.
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