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johnny a custom-pickups


king59

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Hi,

 

I had a question re: a 2nd hand custom johnny a i purchased from reverb awhile back.

The first ja i had which i had to sell had a different sound. larger neck, quilted maple, middle to dark sounding. bigsby.

the 2nd one, maple top, very thin neck. but the pickkups sound radically different.

unlike classic 57's. has that strat, glassy tone. thinner, but quiet.

 

I did note awhile after purchase that the 2 bottom knobs began getting loose and then falling off.

And then i noticed the photo from the sale they had, one of the volume indicaters was askew, totally out of place

so i knew they had at the very least been check ing out the pots.

 

i'm assuming the pups were switched out at some point. sounds good, but uncharacteristic for 57's and i had bought the guitar

to add that particular tonal quality, as i also have a 339 59 reissue.

Obviously i'll have to have someone check the pots, pups, etc. when i have it set up. but i'm assuming i am right.

has anyone else had similar experience from reverb.com or other 2nd hand sellers?

 

Thanks,

richard

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  • 2 months later...

Hi,

 

I had a question re: a 2nd hand custom johnny a i purchased from reverb awhile back.

The first ja i had which i had to sell had a different sound. larger neck, quilted maple, middle to dark sounding. bigsby.

the 2nd one, maple top, very thin neck. but the pickkups sound radically different.

unlike classic 57's. has that strat, glassy tone. thinner, but quiet.

 

I did note awhile after purchase that the 2 bottom knobs began getting loose and then falling off.

And then i noticed the photo from the sale they had, one of the volume indicaters was askew, totally out of place

so i knew they had at the very least been check ing out the pots.

 

i'm assuming the pups were switched out at some point. sounds good, but uncharacteristic for 57's and i had bought the guitar

to add that particular tonal quality, as i also have a 339 59 reissue.

Obviously i'll have to have someone check the pots, pups, etc. when i have it set up. but i'm assuming i am right.

has anyone else had similar experience from reverb.com or other 2nd hand sellers?

 

Thanks,

richard

 

Gibson may have changed the neck carve at some point, though that's pretty unusual for a signature model. Still, perhaps Johnny's tastes have changed.

It sounds very likely that somebody swapped pickups in your guitar, and maybe the pots too. I'm not a huge fan of 57 Classics in general, but in my Johnny A they're perfect. For my tastes.

For a guitar like this, not to disclose that was a serious omission on the part of the seller.

Hope you've got it all sorted out by now.

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I thought the JA guitars had their own pick ups not 57 series. But I thought there was 2 models of this guitar as well. One being more expensive like 8000 and the other about 3500 or so.

Yes, there are two models, both from Gibson Custom. The original JA Custom has a maple top, triple-bound ebony fretboard, custom inlays & gold hardware, and the JA Standard has mahogany top, rosewood fretboard, trapezoid inlays & chrome hardware.

 

I believe both use the 57 Classic pickups.

 

Epiphone makes a version of the Johnny A now too, which sells for less than $1K.

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