New Les Paul. I can't say day because it was about a month ago but still its purple and I loves it.

SillyOctpuss

SillyOctpuss

Well-known member
I've been missing a Les Paul ever since I sold my R7 to help fund our move back to N Ireland. Every time I got my gas fund built up over the last two years something else came along and it didn't work out. I finally had the cash in place a few weeks ago and had been planning to buy a Tokai Goldtop like @MichaelW's but as I was browsing Reverb I saw this

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The Japanese Store behind the Reverb account was Kurosawa Gakki. They were fantastic to deal with and buying direct from them was about 15% cheaper than buying from Reverb because they removed the Japanese sales tax and reverb fees. It took two days from payment for the guitar to arrive in the UK but then Fedex lost it :eek: I wasn't scanned for almost a week and about the time I'd given up hope of getting it I got a call from their office in Coventry to say it had turned up in Barcelona :ROFLMAO: and two days after that it finally arrived.
 
I had a load of mods planned before this even arrived and tbh I'm currently not going to be doing any of them. I've never bonded with a guitar so quickly before. The neck shape is a nice chunky carve that starts out at 23mm at the first fret and goes up to 25mm by the 12th fret. The hardware is all gotoh, it has a bone nut and weighs exactly 9lbs.

The cavities and wiring were all great. I thought I was going to have to rewire it but it came with Orange drop caps and the stock korean pots have a really nice taper and are really smooth so I'm going to leave it for now, I genuinely don't see much of a benefit putting in the cts TVT pots I normally use. The black shielding paint in the cavities is actually conductive, I expected it to just be black paint tbh.

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The absolute best bit though is they've changed their pickups in these now. The old ones were called PAF MKIIs but measured about 9.5k in the neck and 14.5k in the bridge. These current ones which are confusingly called PAF MkII measure 7.5k in the neck and 8.3k in the bridge and sound really great. I've got some bareknuckle Mules and Montys PAFs here but the stock pickups sound so great I'm not going to bother.

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I've got a load of build reports to post over the next few days and will do a few demos using it so people can hear it. Purple is my favourite colour and they fixed all of the things that I thought I'd need to change on one of these so It feels like someone in Japan had a little picture of me on their desk and said "Lets build that bloke a guitar"
 
Wow - so clean! I have a beautiful Gibson R9 and it's nowhere near as clean as that! And it has no shielding in the control cavity either. I mean it plays like a dream and sounds incredible, but still...

I applaud you for not immediately changing pickups etc. It's ridiculous how many players change pickups without even trying the stock ones. If it ain't broke... I will change pickups but only when necessary. More often than not stock pickups can sound fantastic once you adjust to the, and in this case it sounds like you haven't needed to adjust. :)

Japanese dealers can be fantastic to deal with can't they? And Japanese guitars can be incredible. I have a couple of Japanese Gretsches which are some of the best guitars I have ever owned. You seem to have really scored with this one! I wouldn't normally go for purple on a guitar but that is gorgeous.
 
Atleast pot cavity pics should’ve included NSFW tag. Awesome guitar and details get me to inspirational mood and make me really think about paying attention to small details like the small amount of solder backside of a potentiometer. No need to build a mountain there, it’s ugly and unnecessary. Got to love japanese aesthetics here.
 
MichaelW said:
Wow,, that looks awesome! Good to hear they've gone to vintage output pickups, makes me want another one..... :p
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Honestly it's really great. I couldn't be happier with it. I've never imported a guitar like that before so I was really nervous.

Once I'd dialed in the pickup heights I was genuinely surprised at how good the stock pickups are. Seems like they changed them around October time last year. In the back of my head a stupid little FOMO voice keeps telling me to put in the Bare Knuckles or Montys but I've gigged it and recorded with it now and if those other pickups do sound better it's going to be by a very small amount. I'm probably just going to leave the entire guitar stock for as long as possible, I can't remember the last time I got a guitar that I didn't mod apart from the tele I had made.
 
HamishR said:
Wow - so clean! I have a beautiful Gibson R9 and it's nowhere near as clean as that! And it has no shielding in the control cavity either. I mean it plays like a dream and sounds incredible, but still...
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It's definitely finished a lot better than my old R7 was but I loved that guitar and it's little imperfections just somehow made it mine. The neck is chunky on this but no where near the baseball bat my R7 was and it had no shielding in the control cavity either.

HamishR said:
Japanese dealers can be fantastic to deal with can't they? And Japanese guitars can be incredible. I have a couple of Japanese Gretsches which are some of the best guitars I have ever owned.
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I can't recommend Kurosawa Gakki enough. Their comms were excellent and the guitar was shipped a few hrs after I'd sent my payment. They even followed up after the guitar had been delivered to make sure I was happy with everything. It's definitely not the last guitar I buy from them.

I'd love to see some pics of your Japanese gretches. I've played a few Japanese gretsch guitars and they've all been fantastic.
 
Sick guitar. Good call on the electronics. I lived with mine for 8 months before I messed with the pickups. My Gibson had low wind which I liked the tone of in the neck but wanted slightly more push in the bridge. 9.5k is what I landed on. Anything more and it loses too much of the vibe and sounds too modern. Looking forward to hearing the demo. Congrats on the fine guitar.
 
Guardians of the analog said:
Sick guitar. Good call on the electronics. I lived with mine for 8 months before I messed with the pickups. My Gibson had low wind which I liked the tone of in the neck but wanted slightly more push in the bridge. 9.5k is what I landed on. Anything more and it loses too much of the vibe and sounds too modern. Looking forward to hearing the demo. Congrats on the fine guitar.
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Yeah any pickup with 42 gauge enamel wire wound much hotter than you've gone for rolls off too much high end for me.

Hopefully get some time later in the week to record some clips.
 
SillyOctpuss said:
Yeah any pickup with 42 gauge enamel wire wound much hotter than you've gone for rolls off too much high end for me.

Hopefully get some time later in the week to record some clips.
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If I had a high gain amp I would have left the stock bridge in, but a JCM800 is not high gain on its own. It needed just that last push to get it where I wanted it to sound right. My 335 though I have 8.5k in the bridge and that is perfect in that guitar. All this is rig dependent of course. What amp are you using these days?
 
Guardians of the analog said:
If I had a high gain amp I would have left the stock bridge in, but a JCM800 is not high gain on its own. It needed just that last push to get it where I wanted it to sound right. My 335 though I have 8.5k in the bridge and that is perfect in that guitar. All this is rig dependent of course. What amp are you using these days?
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Still using my JVM which is usually dialled up to a jcm800ish kind of tone. I don't run the amp gain too hot and like to boost it with pedals.
 
jjjimi84 said:
This is a sick guitar and that purple is incredible! Heading to reverb to drool all over the offerings.
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This is the store I bought it from. Have your browser auto translate it. They've got loads of cool stuff and they're very reasonably priced. You can remove 10% from any price for the Japanese sales tax.
shop.kurosawagakki.com

【クロサワ楽器店オンラインショップ】いい楽器とのいい出会いを。クロサワ楽器店通販サイト

1957年創業、楽器専門店・クロサワ楽器店の公式オンラインショップ。ギター、ベース、ウクレレ、管楽器、弦楽器、打楽器、鍵盤楽器等の専門店を展開しております。いい楽器との出会いはクロサワ楽器店で。
shop.kurosawagakki.com

Some of the auto translations are also hilarious. Definitely worth a read.
 
SillyOctpuss said:
This is the store I bought it from. Have your browser auto translate it. They've got loads of cool stuff and they're very reasonably priced. You can remove 10% from any price for the Japanese sales tax.
shop.kurosawagakki.com

【クロサワ楽器店オンラインショップ】いい楽器とのいい出会いを。クロサワ楽器店通販サイト

1957年創業、楽器専門店・クロサワ楽器店の公式オンラインショップ。ギター、ベース、ウクレレ、管楽器、弦楽器、打楽器、鍵盤楽器等の専門店を展開しております。いい楽器との出会いはクロサワ楽器店で。
shop.kurosawagakki.com

Some of the auto translations are also hilarious. Definitely worth a read.
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They have shell pink p90 les paul and a goldtop p90 les paul… Time to start the dkpedals Onlyfans
 
SillyOctpuss said:
I've been gassing hard for the limited edition gold top with a wraparound bridge.

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It's absolutely magnificent and only weighs 8lbs 6.
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I have only played one wrap around and I don’t have fond memories of it. What is the appeal to a wrap around? Is it an aesthetic thing? Does the intonation hold up?

It looks beautiful but I scrolled the website until I found the p-90 with the tom bridge. It is now between the tokai and eastman for my goldtop desire. Lust. Longing.

Staring out the window, wondering the depths I will go to get a goldtop p-90.

Stretching and moisturizing……
 
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