Post by colchar on Dec 19, 2011 1:44:44 GMT -5
I actually got this guitar last week but forgot to post a NGD thread here.
I had been GASing for a hollow body but cannot drop $3K on an ES-335 right now. Luckily, I came across an older Korean made (supposedly better than the current Chinese made ones) Epi Dot in my local classifieds. The guy wanted $250 for it and a hard shell case so I pulled the trigger despite noticing that it needed some work.
The nut was a freakin' mess with the 6th string slot cut waaaay too low and some of the others not cut very well either (it almost looked like it had been put on backwards). The action was all over the place - extremely low on the first couple of frets and ridiculously high further along the fretboard. The bridge was raised about a mile and a half off the deck. The pick guard is missing a screw, the screws in the pickup rings as well as the ones for the pickups are all rusted, and one tone knob is cracked. The neck pickup was on a hell of an angle and the guitar is dirty and needs a decent cleaning as well as desperately needing some lemon oil on the fretboard. But for the price I still thought it was a good deal.
When I took it to the tech I deal with at the store I shop at he looked at her he mentioned straight away that the nut had to be swapped and he commented that the action was higher than he would set it if it was being used as a slide guitar!
The store charges $130+cost of nut+tax to replace a nut but I know the tech and he said he would take the guitar home and do the work outside of the store. He is stripping the guitar down and giving it a cleaning and polishing it as well as oiling the fretboard for me. He will also put new screws on in place of the rusted ones (I told him I would be fine with just having the rust removed from the existing ones so it is up to him whether he does that or replaces them). Then he is taking the nut off and cutting and installing a bone nut. He is then adjusting the pickup height, doing a full setup (he knows how I like to have things set up), and replacing the cracked tone knob with one that he has lying around (I think I will swap them for black ones later on so that they match the rest of the plastics - maybe black reflector knobs would look good on it). He's doing everything for $75 so that is far better than what the store would have charged especially as I know he will take his time and will do a good job on her.
The tech did say that he thought the guitar would be a really decent player once it had had some TLC. So, for a total of $325 (what I paid for the guitar and case plus the work by the tech) it looks like I will end up with a pretty decent player that will cover almost all of the same territory as an ES-335 but for just 1/10th of the cost. For what I have put into it I am still getting the Dot for less than a new one would have cost.
This is how she looked when I brought her home and before I gave her to my tech:
I will post some more photos when I get it back from the tech in early January (he had other work to do over the holidays so I told him to take his sweet time with it).
I am also having that tech do some work on my Les Paul (putting in Burtsbucker 1&2 pickups as well as nickel hardware to match the pickup covers) and I am thinking of trading the pickups that come out of my LP for a set of Gibson '57 Classics and then having those put in the Dot as those are the pickups that come in a Gibson ES-335. But I will spend some time with the stock pickups first before deciding on that as I got all of the parts for my LP cheap enough that, were I to sell the pickups that come out of it, I would cover all of my costs and thus have managed to upgrade my LP for free. I'll keep y'all posted on that front!
I had been GASing for a hollow body but cannot drop $3K on an ES-335 right now. Luckily, I came across an older Korean made (supposedly better than the current Chinese made ones) Epi Dot in my local classifieds. The guy wanted $250 for it and a hard shell case so I pulled the trigger despite noticing that it needed some work.
The nut was a freakin' mess with the 6th string slot cut waaaay too low and some of the others not cut very well either (it almost looked like it had been put on backwards). The action was all over the place - extremely low on the first couple of frets and ridiculously high further along the fretboard. The bridge was raised about a mile and a half off the deck. The pick guard is missing a screw, the screws in the pickup rings as well as the ones for the pickups are all rusted, and one tone knob is cracked. The neck pickup was on a hell of an angle and the guitar is dirty and needs a decent cleaning as well as desperately needing some lemon oil on the fretboard. But for the price I still thought it was a good deal.
When I took it to the tech I deal with at the store I shop at he looked at her he mentioned straight away that the nut had to be swapped and he commented that the action was higher than he would set it if it was being used as a slide guitar!
The store charges $130+cost of nut+tax to replace a nut but I know the tech and he said he would take the guitar home and do the work outside of the store. He is stripping the guitar down and giving it a cleaning and polishing it as well as oiling the fretboard for me. He will also put new screws on in place of the rusted ones (I told him I would be fine with just having the rust removed from the existing ones so it is up to him whether he does that or replaces them). Then he is taking the nut off and cutting and installing a bone nut. He is then adjusting the pickup height, doing a full setup (he knows how I like to have things set up), and replacing the cracked tone knob with one that he has lying around (I think I will swap them for black ones later on so that they match the rest of the plastics - maybe black reflector knobs would look good on it). He's doing everything for $75 so that is far better than what the store would have charged especially as I know he will take his time and will do a good job on her.
The tech did say that he thought the guitar would be a really decent player once it had had some TLC. So, for a total of $325 (what I paid for the guitar and case plus the work by the tech) it looks like I will end up with a pretty decent player that will cover almost all of the same territory as an ES-335 but for just 1/10th of the cost. For what I have put into it I am still getting the Dot for less than a new one would have cost.
This is how she looked when I brought her home and before I gave her to my tech:
I will post some more photos when I get it back from the tech in early January (he had other work to do over the holidays so I told him to take his sweet time with it).
I am also having that tech do some work on my Les Paul (putting in Burtsbucker 1&2 pickups as well as nickel hardware to match the pickup covers) and I am thinking of trading the pickups that come out of my LP for a set of Gibson '57 Classics and then having those put in the Dot as those are the pickups that come in a Gibson ES-335. But I will spend some time with the stock pickups first before deciding on that as I got all of the parts for my LP cheap enough that, were I to sell the pickups that come out of it, I would cover all of my costs and thus have managed to upgrade my LP for free. I'll keep y'all posted on that front!
