FUQ (eff -yu - cue) - FAQ's with an EDGE

Tagged As: Epiphone Hollow Body Guitar

Question:
I've been looking a cheapish hollow-body, favorably humbucker equipped guitar, something like a Gibson ES-335. I saw and played Ibanez Artcore, but was thinking if there were other candidates in the same price range. Any recommendations? A second-hand guitar would be OK too.

Answer:
I keep talking about my Samick Royale (RL-1), I'm sure you people are tired of hearing it already, betcha think I'm a shill for the company... Well, I really like this guitar. It's beautiful for one thing--mine's black with cream binding (and I added a cream pickguard) --just takes people's breath away when they see it. And it's just a great player too...I really love the neck (which is what counts after all) and it came perfectly finished too, no issues with fret ends or whatever. Has some good stock hardware --real Grover rotomatics for one thing. The bridge is a Dung Il tune-o-matic clone, I had to buff out the slots, since then no problems. The guitar stays in tune, that counts... It had Duncan-designed humbuckers in there, not my cup of tea, I switched those out for GFS Dream 90s, much better...but since I have other single coil guitars, I'm now switching them out for something more along the lines of a Gretsch/Dearmond thing... Next step is locating a Bigsby for it --can't believe they forgot to put one on! Oh yeah, an important point --this guitar cost me $169! New! Just got lucky on ebay. The higher end Royales must be great guitars...What the hell, Samick most likely makes those Ibanez, Epiphones, and what have you too... The RL-1 has a bolt on neck --I actually wanted that, because I thought I'd have to ship it in a box (as it turned out, I liked the guitar so much, I just carried it on the plane). I have no problems with sustain with this guitar, but I'm not a freak for that anyway. Still, it's not a true hollowbody (no feedback, dammit) and it's quite heavy for a semi...sorry, I can't think of anything else I really don't like about it ($169! $169!) I find myself playing this guitar all the time.