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Buddy West

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Everything posted by Buddy West

  1. P is right, it probably is an Aria Diamond. It is has the potential to be a really nice playing and sounding guitar if some problems are fixed. I have about 10 of these and have learned a lot about them. There is a serious problem with the Japanese bolt on neck hollow bodies like this and similar, made by several different manufacturers. The neck pocket is weak, supported only by the thin laminate sides and back. It is barely supported at all where it meets the body on top. What you end up with is a hinge effect with that neck pocket and over time string tension will pull it out. The action gets higher, you lower the bridge until it cannot get lower and finally you start removing the neck and shimming it.....eventually you run out of adjustment room, the binding starts detaching and catastrophic failure looms. We studied this problem a lot and came up with a solution, a 2nd truss rod running through the meat of the neck pocket and into empty space inside the body. Then we brace the truss rod and spread the force of a considerably large area. This stops the neck pocket drifting and also seems to transfer sound vibrations into the body. That is a side benefit. Once the neck pocket bracing is done you can proceed with other obvious upgrades. I recommend replacing the neck pickup with a high quality single coil, like a Duncan Phat Cat. You have to work with the pickup mounting ring a little but the Phat Cat in humbucker size can be squeezed in. This improvement alone takes this guitar's game up awesomely. I think you can keep the original bridge pickup in place. It does a decent enough job in that position. Other improvements are at ones discretion. This could mean new tuners, a different bridge of some kind, pots and caps if desired. In the end you get a really nice player, frankly when upgraded right I like this model more than the regular Epiphone Casino or standard Gibson. With those models the P90 in the neck is great but I don't think it quite works in the bridge. You are better off there with the cheap humbucker that comes with the Aria 5102T/Epiphone EA 250/Univox Coilly, etc. Those are all the same guitar made by Matsumoko and sold under various names.
  2. I have a 2018 Memphis ES 330 and it came with Burstbuckers, a 1 and 2 to be exact. They are pretty good but I am considering changing them out for a pair of MHS Humbuckers I was lucky enough to score when someone changed them out of something for I don't know what. I am not sure what kind of sonic change I would hear if I swapped the BBs in favor of the MHS set. Would the BBs be salable? Would I be devaluing the ES 330? Is this a good idea? I am mostly into jazz but occasionally do want to be able to rock or blues out. Any advice someone can give me? Thanks in advance.
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