Incoming new hollowbody Jazz box.

[idsnowdog]

While looking for a new TOM bridge on ebay for my large L5 style hollowbody I ran across a company called Grote from China. The guitar that caught my eye was a natural ES-125 style guitar with a single neck mounted P90. The guitar was under $200 and I thought that was a pretty good price for a new hollowbody regardless where it's made. I checked to see if there were any demos on youtube and a number of people were just gushing over these guitars. https://www.youtube.com/results?sear...y=grote+guitar

The youtube users said they bought theirs for $165 on Amazon so I checked their prices and I found a new one in classic sunburst for that price. I kicked around the idea of buying one for a while until I remembered that I had a lot of points from work from our employee recognition program that weren't redeemed. Basically surveys are sent out and if our customers give you a favorable review you earn points which can be redeemed for goods and services. So I looked into whether I could redeem those points toward a Amazon gift certificate. So I cashed in 3,500 points towards a $35 credit. I applied the $35 towards the guitar and I was offered a $60 credit if I applied for an Amazon credit card. So all told I was able to buy the guitar for $70.

Not being real keen on a non-adjustable P90 in the neck I went to TV Jones to see if they made a Filtertron which could replace the P90. I saw they had an adapter that allowed someone to mount a Filtertron in the P90 route. I couldn't imagine spending $150 on a Filtertron for a $70 guitar so I went to Guitarfetish to see if they had anything I could use. They had a new line of GF'Tron pickups which are supposed to be faithful reproductions of the original Filtertrons. So I bought one of their Classic series bridge Filtertrons with 50mm spacing. It's around 6.2K and has an Alnico II magnet. The demos sounded reasonably like a Filtertron so I bought one and an adapter plate that screws into the base of the pickup which can then be hung from the TV Jones Dogear P90 ring. Which was another $47 of parts. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yJQVlVuutAQ

This will be the first all new guitar I have bought in 20 years and probably the cheapest also. I'm hoping that the Filtertron neck is jangly, bright and bell like instead of dark and thick like the P90.

 

[FuseG4]

Name looks like scrote but heck that's a great price, hope it works out!

 

[Dave Locher]

I hope it works out, but the neck is crooked in that photo?

 

[Mincer]

I do look forward to seeing how this project turns out. I am curious as to what an archtop at that price is like. I hope it is a hidden gem!

 

[jeremy]

narrow waste and a big booty on that one. curious to hear your thoughts once it comes in

 

[idsnowdog]

I received it yesterday and I’m still working on it. I have replaced the pickup and got everything roughly adjusted. But the balance of treble to bass is off and the bass response is weak. Not muddy, just not deep and percussive like most Filtertrons. Being a thin hollowbody it is a naturally bright guitar and acoustically it has a nice tone but not a real strong tone. The top strings ring out too loudly and changing the pickup height hasn’t fixed that. When I ordered the GFS pickup I was suspicious of an Alnico II and I might change the magnet to see if I can tune the frequency response and get a more percussive rockabilly tone. I'm unsure of the magnet dimension though?

The finish is pretty good and I only noticed one small booger in the finish near the neck joint on the bass side. The trapeze bridge is also tarnished and not very well plated. The frets aren’t sharp but I noticed that not all the frets are exactly the same length and the edge bevel of some of them are slightly off. Some went to the edge of the binding while others were a tiny bit short of the edge of the fretboard. The frets are also pretty small and I would prefer taller frets. There were no high frets but they were badly tarnished and the fretboard needed to be cleaned. The rosewood was dry and porous and there was a lot of gunk in those pores. Once conditioned no problem. The nut was the correct height but it was binding horribly which would cause pinging when tuning and the tuning wouldn’t stay steady. A combination of lubricant and sanding the slots removed the binding at the nut.

The neck angle is good but the bridge needs to be fairly high and like all hollowbodies I hate that it isn't anchored. However, the action is pretty low and string tension isn't bad. A new set of tuners with a better gear ratio would make tuning easier. I would like to replace the trapeze tailpiece with something more substantial and the output jack is loose and will need to be replaced. A Varitone like this might be worthwhile to give more versatility since it’s only a one pickup guitar. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OGEwHJrLhIU

The verdict:
For $169 it's pretty hard to go wrong with this guitar. It's well built and the most serious complaint I have is the fretwork and the nut. It needs larger frets and more attention needs to be paid to uniformity in the length and bevel of the fret edges. The trapeze tailpiece is poor quality but the TOM is good. Bridge height is a bit high, but neck angle and action are ok. Due to the bridge height and fixed pickup you can't get the stock p90 anywhere near the strings even with shims. I replaced the P90 with an adjustable Filtertron and it's maxed out on height adjustment and still a bit low on the bass strings. The height of the neck at the body could be lower which would make adjusting the pickup easier and reduce bridge height. A lot of people like to say that upgrading cheap guitars like this is polishing a turd, but I believe you're buying a good platform for customization. Compared to my friends vintage ES-125 the tailpiece is no worse, the bridge is better, the tuners are better, the action is better, but the frets are smaller. It doesn't have the timbre and depth of his ES-125 but it's also 50 years newer and doesn't have all of the buzzes and rattles of a vintage guitar either.

 

[Mincer]

Thanks for coming back and giving an initial review. I would be curious to hear what you think in a few weeks, too. I think for the price, you are going to have fret and nut issues, which hopefully you can either work around or repair.

 

[idsnowdog]

I redid the pickup mounting to get closer to the strings and the string balance is a lot better. Although it's bass ackwards from every other pickup I have with the bass at 3mm and the treble strings at 6mm. It excels at clean tones and there isn't an ounce of mud anywhere. It's very jangly, clean and it rings like a bell. Almost a piano like clean resonance and timbre. The .022 capacitor on the tone was too dark and I replace it with a .010 capacitor. Although .015 would probably be better.

 

[Aceman]

$169 is worth it just to ruin it learning how to do frets and file nuts yourself!

I don't trust any of the Firefly YouTube pimps as far as I can throw them. Or whatever cheap Chinese crap they are hawking. I bet almost all of them get this stuff for free and are sponsored by the companies in China.

That said - you can pay $5000 and get a Les Paul that needs the fret ends filed too. I am also an aficionado of the cheap guitar. And for a Mere $300 you can get some really good stuff. So, for $169 I do believe you can et a totally workable axe that is good with a couple of relative cheap upgrades of your choice. Again - we'll pay $5k for a Les Paul and replace the pickups in that too.

The bar is high and the cost is low these days. Premium manufactures need to step up or get out.

 

[Mincer]

The biggest thing is that an archtop is tough to make inexpensively. But it sounds like a great project.

 

[idsnowdog]

I think I can close the case on tweaking this guitar. I replaced the polished A2 magnet with a shortened roughcast A4 and replaced the 500K volume with a 300K volume and the tonal balance is now where I like it. While the GFS may be a direct replacement for a Filtertron they aren't built the same. The bobbins/coils aren't as tall as a Filtertron and are the same hollow centered bobbins used on their Deluxe style mini-humbuckers. The magnets are shortened single thickness humbucker magnets and not double thickness like Filtertrons. The baseplate is plain brass and similar to the originals except the originals are zinc plated.

The verdict on GF'Trons:
The vintage wound style that I bought are overly bright with 500K pots. They jangle, they chime, they are percussive, they have great note definition and are very transparent sounding but they lack warmth even with A2 magnets. The upside is they are good sounding pickups and at $40 they are far cheaper than Lollar or TV Jones. You can swap the magnets easily but you will need to shorten them first. Since they aren't built exactly the same as Filtertrons they sound different and you really have to lower the treble side to even out string volume. If you are looking to replace a dark and noisy dogear P90 these pickups with the proper adapters are a decent choice.

 

[Demanic]

Short RCA4? Wow, I'm impressed. That's not a solution that too many people would think of. I bet that they sound fantastic now. Not too bright but even response that shows off the wind.

Sent from my SM-A115A using Tapatalk