Chinese custom guitar - dipping my toe in to test the water
Posted: Fri Apr 08, 2016 2:01 am
There has been lots of talk (for and against) the emerging Chinese made guitars. Some of the negative talk is based upon copyright issues and down right fakes that get touted as the real McCoy. The waters get a little murky when one realises most of the major manufacturers use Chinese guitar plants to build their lower end product these days anyway. The Les Paul my nephew bought a couple of years back is an Epiphone LP made in China and given the cost difference between that and my Gibson USA made LP, I would be happy with the Chinese made version. In short the quality of guitars manufactured in China has improved by leaps and bounds over the past ten years. Sure you can still buy shit and many times those crappy guitars are also built for a market, for a slice of the guitar buying population that only wants to spend $100 on a guitar. But as I have seen with the Chinese made Hofner Club Bass I bought late last year (for my nephew) there are also superb sounding and built guitars and basses coming out of China. Some with legitimate western brand headstock labels, some with not so legitimate headstock labels and some with local Chinese labels.
So ... given how cheap these Chinese guitars are I thought I'd stick my toe in the water and order a custom built guitar. I also selected a seller that I knew was actually a guitar factory (not some middle man sourcing what ever they can from the various wholesalers). This would limit me to the style of guitar/bass the factory manufactured, although most Chinese guitar factories it seems do have a large range of models, styles and genre' (jazz, rock, traditional, acoustic.)
I also thought I should order something that is outside my comfort zone. So no Offsets, no strats, no 335 or 125 or Casino style hollow/semi hollow electrics (although I did see some awesome models available) no teles. And what ever I decided to get, I wanted it customised ... something unique. Given the low cost of the guitars themselves, any customisation should be damn cheap.
I decided I'd order a customised Les Paul style guitar from the Chinese guitar factory that I bought the Hofner Club bass from.
Now I am not really a LP guy, so my logic is that if this guitar excites me, then it must be good. I already have an awesome Gibson high end LP with normal HBs, so... I have decided to ask whether they can locate mini HBs and effectively build me a Les Paul Deluxe.
On the website of the guitar factory I was looking at they had mini HBs on some of the jazz style guitars (floating bridge hollow bodied) and on the FIREBIRD style guitars. But not on the Les Pauls. When I asked about fitting mini HBs there didn't seem to be any problem, I was just told it may take a little longer to get the CNC programmed for the LP style body. I also asked about slightly different style PUP mounts (more like the style used in the Epiphone Rivieras rather than the style usd on the LP Deluxe). This took a couple of emails but with the use of photos it was sorted. They even said they'd try and get the mounts in an ivory colour rather than black plastic for me. Wow! great !
The specs are:
- 2 x MHBs
- kluson tulip tuners (with greenish buttons)
- ebony fret board
- mother of pearl inlay markers on the neck markers
- flamed maple ( but not overtly book matched or what ever its called)
- white binding on neck and body
- honey coloured light weight mahogany body
- Seafoam green coloured body
- my own headstock label in mother of pearl
- my own headstock decal
- MADE IN CHINA on the back of the headstock ... yes I asked for this specifically !!!
So there is nothing that even comes close that anyone could claim this is a fake or counterfeit item. In short it is as if i went to a locally guitar builder and said "build me one of these please"
I also asked whether they could send me some photos of the build as I explained I wanted to share them with my friends. I get the feeling this isn't a normal situation, but given I am probably the first westerner to ask for this they politely said "yes, OK".
I sent them a mock-up of what I wanted for the headstock label. I sent them large high resolution TIF files of the artwork.
Below are the photos from the factory as the guitar is being manufactured ... apparently the hardware is going on this week.
One of my friends was interested in a "tree of life" inlay and so i asked the lady I am dealing with
Just compare the original artwork I sent for the headstock logo inlay to what they have created. It is amazing what laser cutters can do these days
So ... given how cheap these Chinese guitars are I thought I'd stick my toe in the water and order a custom built guitar. I also selected a seller that I knew was actually a guitar factory (not some middle man sourcing what ever they can from the various wholesalers). This would limit me to the style of guitar/bass the factory manufactured, although most Chinese guitar factories it seems do have a large range of models, styles and genre' (jazz, rock, traditional, acoustic.)
I also thought I should order something that is outside my comfort zone. So no Offsets, no strats, no 335 or 125 or Casino style hollow/semi hollow electrics (although I did see some awesome models available) no teles. And what ever I decided to get, I wanted it customised ... something unique. Given the low cost of the guitars themselves, any customisation should be damn cheap.
I decided I'd order a customised Les Paul style guitar from the Chinese guitar factory that I bought the Hofner Club bass from.
Now I am not really a LP guy, so my logic is that if this guitar excites me, then it must be good. I already have an awesome Gibson high end LP with normal HBs, so... I have decided to ask whether they can locate mini HBs and effectively build me a Les Paul Deluxe.
On the website of the guitar factory I was looking at they had mini HBs on some of the jazz style guitars (floating bridge hollow bodied) and on the FIREBIRD style guitars. But not on the Les Pauls. When I asked about fitting mini HBs there didn't seem to be any problem, I was just told it may take a little longer to get the CNC programmed for the LP style body. I also asked about slightly different style PUP mounts (more like the style used in the Epiphone Rivieras rather than the style usd on the LP Deluxe). This took a couple of emails but with the use of photos it was sorted. They even said they'd try and get the mounts in an ivory colour rather than black plastic for me. Wow! great !
The specs are:
- 2 x MHBs
- kluson tulip tuners (with greenish buttons)
- ebony fret board
- mother of pearl inlay markers on the neck markers
- flamed maple ( but not overtly book matched or what ever its called)
- white binding on neck and body
- honey coloured light weight mahogany body
- Seafoam green coloured body
- my own headstock label in mother of pearl
- my own headstock decal
- MADE IN CHINA on the back of the headstock ... yes I asked for this specifically !!!
So there is nothing that even comes close that anyone could claim this is a fake or counterfeit item. In short it is as if i went to a locally guitar builder and said "build me one of these please"
I also asked whether they could send me some photos of the build as I explained I wanted to share them with my friends. I get the feeling this isn't a normal situation, but given I am probably the first westerner to ask for this they politely said "yes, OK".
I sent them a mock-up of what I wanted for the headstock label. I sent them large high resolution TIF files of the artwork.
Below are the photos from the factory as the guitar is being manufactured ... apparently the hardware is going on this week.
One of my friends was interested in a "tree of life" inlay and so i asked the lady I am dealing with
she sent the photo ... wow.."do you have only one or do you have a number of different "tree of life" inlay designs
Just compare the original artwork I sent for the headstock logo inlay to what they have created. It is amazing what laser cutters can do these days