NGD! So I finally broke down and bought a *IBSON! 7-18-23 Update

MichaelW

MichaelW

Well-known member
.......................a CHIBSON that is........... :ROFLMAO:

So before my chief enabler @szukalski TBR'd me (Tempted Beyond Resistance) with that link to my Faber/Tokai P90 Goldtop LP Standard I had ordered a Chibson P90 Goldtop. Curiosity got the better of me. I keep hearing stories about how some folks are getting "Epiphone quality" Chibsons so decided to roll the dice and try one. Besides for $225 it wasn't a huge risk.

It took quite a while to get here. And right off the bat I can tell you, that it was nowhere NEAR "Epiphone quality", in fact it was a bloody mess!
I seriously considered just taking my sawzall to it so it would fit in the garbage bin........

Ok, that's not totally fair.....there are some pro's to this guitar.
1. The neck angle is good. Straight out of the Gibson playbook. And the neck was straight as an arrow, no warping or twisting.
2. They beefed up the neck profile right where a volute would go. This is always the weak spot on G style guitars especially with 17 degree neck angles
3. The gold top color is......."okay"....it could be worse. It's not a deep rich gold hue like my Tokai's or a real Gibby.
4. Binding is all cleanly done with no overspray.
5. Top is deeply carved and looks authentic.
6. Real rosewood fingerboard and inlays are pretty well done considering it's a $200 guitar.

Cons.....everything else about the guitar.......:ROFLMAO:
I would say the finish application quality is about on par with a Harley Benton.

When I say "it was a mess" I mean everything else, hardware, electronics, fretwork, setup, all needed to be addressed.

This is how it arrived:

IMG_4721.JPG

I couldn't even turn the volume knobs they were so cattywampus.

Headstock looks ok if you don't look too close. It's off and easy to see it's a counterfeit.
IMG_4722.JPG

The back looks ok, but it's not a solid body. They took a page from Epiphone and used a multi-piece body then put a one piece veneer on the back.
It's claimed to be mahogany but I'm not sure it is. It's not heavy enough. I'd say this guitar clocks in around 8lbs.
IMG_4723.JPG

Stacked neck heel, no surprise. But interestingly no scarf joint. The rest is a single piece.
IMG_4724.JPG

These have to be the absolute worst tuners I've ever seen on a guitar, total crap.
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When I went to remove the knobs...this happened.....:ROFLMAO:
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Stock wiring......
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nightmare continued in next post......
 
So despite my temptation to have a go at it with a SawzAll I rolled up my sleeves and decided to see what I could do it it.
I had pretty much everything I needed in spare parts to completely rebuild this. I decided that I was not going to invest any real $$'s into this
(apart from my labor). I did wind up having to get some minor things, like a new set of knobs, some knob pointers, a new poker chip and a jack plate. Oh and I didn't have any long shaft pots, so I had to order some of those. It was the most expensive thing I bought for this project.

First up, the cheap plastic nut had to go. Unfortunately, nothing was standard size and my pre-cut bone nuts would not fit. They were too small. So I had to cut a new nut from a blank.......by hand.....bleah. My belt sander died a few years ago and I've never replaced it.
It was a lot of work.

IMG_4738.JPG

The fretboard was felt like it was not sanded at all. Super rough. I probably spent 3 hours just scraping and smoothing it out.
It's tough to do when the frets are already installed. I was tempted to yank the frets. But thankfully I didn't heh.
The fingerboard was also so dry it looked like tinder (the wood not the hookup app). It soaked up like 5 coats of F1 oil like it was dying of thirst.
Then I sealed it with some Danish oil before buffing it out.

IMG_4730.JPG

I had to do a complete fret level, dress, crown and polish.
IMG_4737.JPG

I had a Gotoh Nashville style tunomatic bridge with an aluminum stop tail that came off another guitar, so I used that and tossed the POS bridge that came with it. Also cleaned up all the cavities, there's so much buff fluff everything, I used a toothbrush and a vacuum hose and worked it all out before painting with shielding paint.

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I had a set of P90's that came out of my Epiphone LP Special that went on this guitar. The nicest thing I could say about the stock pickups is......that they were magnets..... :ROFLMAO: . I decided to go with the black covers since my Faber gold top has cream covers. Not completely sure I like the look, but that's for another day......heh.

IMG_4742.JPG

I had a set of Gotoh Kluson style tuners that came off my Eastman that went onto this. I had to ream the tuner holes to make the bushings fit but it all worked out.

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Fret board looks pretty decent now. Here's a pic of how it looks after the scraping, sanding, and fretwork.

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Shaping the nut, old school style......
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Continued in next post.....
 
You sure that's not a legit Gibson? 😂
tim-robinson-i-think-you-should-leave.gif
 
I replaced every single piece of wire in the guitar. Switchcraft jack, CTS pots, Russian PIO .015mf caps.
IMG_4754.JPG

Here she is all done....I think I've got about 20 hours into this guitar spread over the past week and a half. Definitely my most challenging "fixing up a cheap guitar so it plays and sounds great" project. Those are some temp knobs. Only ones I had that would fit. Amazon should be dropping off some gold top hats sometime today to finish this off.

IMG_4755.JPG

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I didn't have a Switchcraft toggle, so it got a Korean PRS toggle switch. Which works fine but is a little stiff. Even the poker chip it came with had to be replaced, it was total crap. This is a "Vintage Forge" brand poker chip from Amazon. They have some decent stuff.

IMG_4757.JPG


Still need to fine tune the tailpiece, it's a bit low and the high E string is touching the edge of the bridge. One reason I generally don't like Nashville bridges and prefer ABR bridges.

IMG_4758.JPG

Allparts vintage cream jack plate to replace the pot metal one that came on the guitar.
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I've had this nut blank literally for over 20 years, It's been a long time since I made a nut from scratch. It could use a bit more shaping, but it works for now.

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So last night I finally got to the point where I could fire it up and play it.
After all my bitching about the quality of this guitar, I'll be damned if it doesn't play and sound pretty darn good!

All that effort I put into the fretboard and frets has had a huge impact on the playing experience. It now plays like "buttah".
There's no neck joint "hump" and the neck is straight as can be, so all of which made it possible to pull the best out of this thing.

Still not a fan of the Epiphone pickups. Actually the bridge pickup sounds pretty good, but the neck pickup just doesn't have the clarity and honk I generally like in a P90. Having said that, it's a 300% improvement over the original pickups.

So at this point, not really sure what I'm going to do with this guitar. If I invest in some better pickups it would be a pretty killer guitar.
I mean it's already a pretty nice guitar, the pickup issue is a personal preference thing, not a quality thing.

But I already have a GoldTop with P90's.

What sayeth the forumites? How about a @fig style contest and giveaway?
 
I've always enjoyed scraping fingerboards. Except this one time when I fixed up an old classical guitar for a pal. That thing had been played hard for 40 years with no maintenance outside of string changes. He finally let me remove the duct tape and glue the top all the way on so I gave it a little sprucing and the finger crust that came off that thing was disgusting. Imagine Willie's "Trigger" but a few decades newer. No thumb holes but it had the vibe.
 
Beautiful!

My friend came over last week to show me his new bmw motorcycle. So I handed him my new chibson to check out and he noted that it says GIBSUN not GIBSON.

Then he dropped it!

I $#!+ you not, it survived the relic treatment. I actually kind of like it.... gonna just put a coat of varnish, sand, and another coat to preserve that look!!! Here it is in it's new crossrock case with the Walker and Williams leather strap that probably would have kept it from being dropped, unfortunately it arrived a day later....doh.

IMG_0297.jpeg IMG_0298.jpeg IMG_0299.jpeg
 
RetiredUnit1 said:
Beautiful!

My friend came over last week to show me his new bmw motorcycle. So I handed him my new chibson to check out and he noted that it says GIBSUN not GIBSON.

Then he dropped it!

I $#!+ you not, it survived the relic treatment. I actually kind of like it.... gonna just put a coat of varnish, sand, and another coat to preserve that look!!! Here it is in it's new crossrock case with the Walker and Williams leather strap that probably would have kept it from being dropped, unfortunately it arrived a day later....doh.

View attachment 48005 View attachment 48006 View attachment 48007
Click to expand...
Yours definitely looks like it was built a LOT better than mine was. I guess Chibsons are all over the map in quality. I had no clue what I was buying, it was kinda like eenie meenie miney moe when I chose one....heh.

Ouch, did you at least go and knock over his Beemer? :ROFLMAO:
 
Dang... I have honestly never seen something that started out so... well... "bad" just doesn't cover it... "awful" seems woefully inadequate as well... let's go with "abysmal" as close enough... that came out actually looking pretty decent! Great job!!!
 
MichaelW said:
.......................a CHIBSON that is........... :ROFLMAO:

So before my chief enabler @szukalski TBR'd me (Tempted Beyond Resistance) with that link to my Faber/Tokai P90 Goldtop LP Standard I had ordered a Chibson P90 Goldtop. Curiosity got the better of me. I keep hearing stories about how some folks are getting "Epiphone quality" Chibsons so decided to roll the dice and try one. Besides for $225 it wasn't a huge risk.

It took quite a while to get here. And right off the bat I can tell you, that it was nowhere NEAR "Epiphone quality", in fact it was a bloody mess!
I seriously considered just taking my sawzall to it so it would fit in the garbage bin........

Ok, that's not totally fair.....there are some pro's to this guitar.
1. The neck angle is good. Straight out of the Gibson playbook. And the neck was straight as an arrow, no warping or twisting.
2. They beefed up the neck profile right where a volute would go. This is always the weak spot on G style guitars especially with 17 degree neck angles
3. The gold top color is......."okay"....it could be worse. It's not a deep rich gold hue like my Tokai's or a real Gibby.
4. Binding is all cleanly done with no overspray.
5. Top is deeply carved and looks authentic.
6. Real rosewood fingerboard and inlays are pretty well done considering it's a $200 guitar.

Cons.....everything else about the guitar.......:ROFLMAO:
I would say the finish application quality is about on par with a Harley Benton.

When I say "it was a mess" I mean everything else, hardware, electronics, fretwork, setup, all needed to be addressed.

This is how it arrived:

View attachment 47970

I couldn't even turn the volume knobs they were so cattywampus.

Headstock looks ok if you don't look too close. It's off and easy to see it's a counterfeit.
View attachment 47971

The back looks ok, but it's not a solid body. They took a page from Epiphone and used a multi-piece body then put a one piece veneer on the back.
It's claimed to be mahogany but I'm not sure it is. It's not heavy enough. I'd say this guitar clocks in around 8lbs.
View attachment 47976

Stacked neck heel, no surprise. But interestingly no scarf joint. The rest is a single piece.
View attachment 47977

These have to be the absolute worst tuners I've ever seen on a guitar, total crap.
View attachment 47978

When I went to remove the knobs...this happened.....:ROFLMAO:
View attachment 47979

Stock wiring......
View attachment 47980

View attachment 47981

View attachment 47982

nightmare continued in next post......
Click to expand...
Sounds like how a Gibson arrives & you have to set it up so it is playable with the flaws & & all! But 10% of the Price!
 
Michael there's a night and day difference with that fretboard and frets. Very nice work. It looked drier than the Sahara when you got it. I can't believe how much stuff you scraped off the fretboard itself. I've never had to scrape a fretboard. Is that richlite?
 
music6000 said:
Sounds like how a Gibson arrives & you have to set it up so it is playable with the flaws & & all! But 10% of the Price!
Click to expand...
I would kick your dealer in the butt. He gets extra money from Gibson for setting it up properly before handing it to the customer. I know that a lot of online dealer say: oh it was the climate change during shipment to you, but it's only their lazyness and disrespect to the customer! Rant over.
 
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