Finally!!!!!

[MikeJackal]

After waiting over a month in postage waiting time I was beginning to think my new baby was never going to get here. But all good things come to those who wait and she finally arrived today.
I have been GASing for a semi for a year or so now and when this girl caught my eye on Ebay I couldn't resist. I paid way more than I should have and will probably never see the value of the guitar reach what I paid for it but oh well..you can't take it with you after all.
So here she is, revealed to you in the same way as HBL (sorry i stole your idea )

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She is a 1996 Epiphone Sorrento.
Sound clips will shortly follow.

Some information for anybody who is ever considering buying a guitar from the USA and shipped to the UK:
Customs charges are getting very expensive in the UK, the charges for this guitar were £145. That is on top of the purchase price and shipping of the guitar, so be very careful before you buy. I knew there would be some charges but i didn't expect that much. If you get the sender to put Gift on the customs forms then you will pay slightly less.

[HalfBlindLefty]

Aawww that's a beauty..... omg I go a gas attack right now...
Sweet man, that's gonna be a keeper I guess.

Don't worry about the idea, I stole it myself from a Dutch forum gitaarnet.nl were they do this kinda presentations all the time

Congrats !!

[MikeJackal]

Some Quickly Recorded Clips:
Neck Pickup Half Volume download/file.php?id=937
Neck Pickup Full Volume download/file.php?id=938
Middle Position Half Volume download/file.php?id=939
Middle Position Full Volume download/file.php?id=940
Bridge Pickup Half Volume download/file.php?id=941
Bridge Pickup Full Volume download/file.php?id=942

And a full song to finish. I started off on a clean setting and moved through the different pickup positions then went to a slightly overdriven sound and repeated the positions. Finally to a full on overdrive in my Gary Moore preset again going through the 3 positions.
download/file.php?id=943
She needs a little TLC, the volume controls are not great but not surprising given the age and the neck is a little slow. I think the action needs to be a bit higher and the fretboard given some love with my lemon oil but other than that I am very happy with her.

[VikingBlues]

Looks great - and sounds great too!!

Very nicely put together set of recorded sounds - and very nicely played (as always). You're getting great tones so soon - most impressive.

Every guitar collection should have at least one semi-acoustic and this sounds like a keeper. Glad it was worth the wait (a couple of days is too long a wait, so a month must seem unending) - but, ouch, those customs charges!

[Bluesmole]

She's a beauty LS and she can 'sing'. Love your track.

[vancouverois]

Beautiful guitar!
I like the tone on the track
Congrats !

[12bar]

Congrats!

Sounds and looks great!

She needs a little TLC, the volume controls are not great but not surprising given the age and the neck is a little slow. I think the action needs to be a bit higher and the fretboard given some love with my lemon oil but other than that I am very happy with her.

Regarding volume and action this where my first thoughts when I got my Epiphone. I raised the action, but still use the original volume control.

There's still our collab open, but I'm quite busy now. Maybe your new toy can do the backing?

[Strummer07]

Looking Good !!
Sounds great !!

[DeaconBlues]

Nice looking Epi!

I've got an itch for a semi-hollow body, as of late. Don't know what I want, yet, but I have been looking.

[MikeJackal]

Looks great - and sounds great too!!
Glad it was worth the wait (a couple of days is too long a wait, so a month must seem unending) - but, ouch, those customs charges!

Thank VB, I wasn't sure what to expect with the P-90's as I've never owned any before. I think I was probably expecting them to sound more single coil than they actually do rather than sounding quite a lot like my Les Paul.
And yes I was more than a little annoyed with the customs charges.

Thanks Bluesmole and Vancouver for the nice comments

Sounds and looks great!
Regarding volume and action this where my first thoughts when I got my Epiphone. I raised the action, but still use the original volume control.
There's still our collab open, but I'm quite busy now. Maybe your new toy can do the backing?

Thanks Gerd, I'm very happy with her apart from the problems I mentioned. The volume controls are very nearly dead I'm afraid though and in some positions they dont work at all, have to fiddle with them to make sure the sound is constant. The tone controls work ok but are scratchy as you can hear at some points on my recording. So then will come the tricky part, replacing them. Obviously there is no access to the inside of the guitar, anyone have any advice about replacing them. Do you think it would be easier if i wired and soldered them all up first then put them into the guitar by feeding it all through the F slot?

As for our collab, it is a work in progress and I don't want you to worry about it. I want it to be the first really thought out and planned piece I have worked on so it may take many months before we get anywhere near making a full final version.

And final thanks to Strummer and Deacon for the compliments. I had that itch Deacon as you can obviously see. My plan had always been to get a Sheraton II, but then this one came along and I had never heard of them before and figured it must be a rarer model than some of the other semi-hollow's so I snapped her up.

[Blindboy]

SWEET! You should have a great time with that guitar! I can tell you from experience that those pickups sound great through a tube amp at volume, and they sound great through a small tube amp at lower, jazzier volumes, especially if you roll off the tone control a bit.
As for replacing the pots... try some spray contact cleaner/lubricant first. If that doesn't help, the way to work on those is with coat hanger wires through the F-holes or in worst case, through a pickup hole. Good luck.

[2WheelsOfBlues]

Whow man.

Its a beautie
If she played lyke she looking your a lucky man

[MikeJackal]

Well i ordered a can of contact cleaner today so i can get those pots working nicely again. I've been playing her a lot today and found the neck quite slow and difficult to perform bends. So i did a bit of research and decided to polish the frets. I did this with Turtlewax "Safe Cut", the equivalent in the US is T-Cut, it removes all the years of oxidation and brings the frets back to life and they are super shiny again now. I then treated the fretboard with D'Andrea Lemon Oil because it was very dry.
The final more drastic action i took was to rub the neck down with a piece of cloth similar to a kitchen pan scrubber (not the type with steel wool, just the fabric type). Doing that removes some of the laquer and therefore the stickness associated with Poly-eurethene finish guitars. Then i used the Safe Cut to restore the finish back to a nice satin shine and remove any visible scratches.

All that's left for me to do is restring her and reap the rewards of some TLC. I will post again later with the physical before and after differences in how she plays...I still need to think of a name for her, any suggestions?

[drockadam]

Sounds great! Beautiful colour, really strikes your eyes.

[MikeJackal]

TLC complete...for now...She is strung up again and plays like a dream. The neck is now silky smooth to run up and down and the strings glide across the frets rather than judder across the rust. The lemon oil has made a big difference too not only to how it plays but also visually now the years of dirt and grime have gone, it adds a slight lubrication that makes moving from fret to fret easier.
I also raised the action slightly and checked for any string buzzing, bends are now much easier. I don't use any official measurements when I adjust the action, I just move it around until it feels right.

An interesting thing I discovered when I took out one of the pickups out of curiosity, they are actually made by Samsung. Who knew they ever made pickups!

Tomorrow........Intonation.

[VikingBlues]

Interesting about the pickups - there's a thread on the My Les Paul Forum which has several members finding this brand of pickup in their MIK Epis (despite initial denials from Gibson that they were ever used).

Eventually a reply from Gibson of:-
.........................................................

Dear Chris,

Thank you for your reply.
We don’t have much info on these pickups, that’s the problem- there were only few people aware of the fact that we had these pickups on Epiphone guitars installed.
I don’t think that Samsung will have more info on these pickups either, but you can give it a try of course.
If you have any further queries, please do not hesitate to contact me again.


Kind regards,


Stijn Vergeest

Gibson Europe Customer Service
...........................................................

One member posted ... "After reading up on some reviews, these pickups came stock on a lot of 90's MIK Epiphones, including the LP Specials, the Dots, Sheratons and of course LP Standards and Customs..." - but there's nothing really conclusive.

I guess the main thing is they sound good. But that could have a great deal to do with the qualities of the player of course.

Here's the thread for what it's worth (very little!).

http://www.mylespaul.com/forums/epiphon ... ckups.html

[HalfBlindLefty]

There are some fantastic sounds in that geetar :)
I like the neck pickup en the middle full volume best.
But then again, i'm not a bridge pickup - sound lover. The only reason there are neck pickups on my guitars is that I bought them that way :)
Great playing btw.

[rocknroll93]

nice! im gasing for a strat, but of course.. i dont have any money at all...

[bluesblooded]

Really nice playing, nice sound.

So then will come the tricky part, replacing them. Obviously there is no access to the inside of the guitar, anyone have any advice about replacing them. Do you think it would be easier if i wired and soldered them all up first then put them into the guitar by feeding it all through the F slot?

I replaced a volume pot on a Joe Pass Epiphone a few months back and the hardest thing to do is put everything back.

I believe you should feed them in from the pickup holes, not the F holes, you will scratch the finish.

You have to remove everything from the guitar to fix it. The ground wire is behind the bridge button strap.

Make a mark on the pot shaft so you know which is which.

The most important thing here is to make sure you have fish wire (and tubing) for every component so you can pull them back in there respective holes. This includes the switch, the jack, the ground and the 4 pots. I recommend using 2 feet of tubing for each pot. Make sure the tubing fits very snug to the pot shaft. Then you can remove the nuts and drop the pots in the bottom of the guitar. then pull them from the pickup hole.

Solder some guitar wire to the ground so you can pull back on it otherwise, you will cry when comes the time to reinstall it.

For the jack, I soldered a 1/4 inch jack to an electrical wire so I could push the jack inside the guitar but the nut had to go through the jack and stay outside the guitar (man this is complicated to explain, sorry, I hope you understand what I mean, otherwise I'll take a picture of my device)

Once you have everything out of the guitar, install every component on a cardboard so they stay in there original position. Make sure you space them as on the guitar so you have enough wire when you put them back in the guitar otherwise, you will curse for not doing this if they don't fit back in.

Once you have replace everything, reatach your fish wires and tubing to were they belong, drop everything in, then pull on the fish wires and tubing to bring everything were they belong.

No matter how careful you are, you will ask yourself why you started this... don't worry, it will go back in and you should be happy.

One last thing, If you have a wife with small hands, ask her to help, I have medium hands and they would not go inside the guitar.

Another last thing, use tubing for the pots, don't use rope or wire, has it will not keep the washer in place. I know I used rope to fish the pot back in, never again....

Good luck...

[MikeJackal]

Thank you to everybody for the advice and the kind comments. I am really getting to know her now and I think will be my go to guitar for most rhythm playing I do.
Special thanks go to Blindboy for suggesting the contact cleaner, the can arrived today. I tied a bit of sewing thread around the top of the pot then took them off one by one and fed them through the bridge pickup hole. Gave it two or three sprays with the cleaner while twisting them from one end to the other. They now work perfectly with no scratching in any position!

All I had to do then was pull on the thread and it pulled it back into place through the correct holes with no fiddling around.