Looking for an electric guitar. Help me!

Bayou_Picker

Bayou_Picker

Forum God Atheist
I'm mostly an acoustic player, so this is a pain for me. I'm looking for a good semi-hollow/archtop guitar to start electric gigging. I don't know where to begin my search, and i thought it would be fun to see what suggestions you guys might have. Any brand and model (as long as its a semi-hollow body or archtop) is up for grabs.

MY budget = 800$

Thanks alot to those who participate! :)
 
Re: Looking for an electric guitar. Help me!

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Re: Looking for an electric guitar. Help me!

If you're going semi-hollow, look at Ibanez Artcore, those Washburns Jolly posted, and if you can find something in your budget, Eastman.

If you want a jazz archtop, Godin makes THE budget archtop IMO.
 
Re: Looking for an electric guitar. Help me!

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Epiphone 50th Anniversary 1961 Casino

I played one last week at GC. Looks and sounds amazing.
 
Re: Looking for an electric guitar. Help me!

As far as archtops, I really like the Godin Kingpin I/II and 5th Avenue. The 5th avenue and the Kingpin I are IIRC identical except for the Kingpin I has a P90 in the neck. The Kingpin II is similar, but has a cutaway and a bridge pickup. Fantastic guitars. Great for jazz, blues, country - they're jazz boxes though, so not as much for rock.

5th Avenue:


5th Avenue Kingpin:


5th Avenue Kingpin II:
 
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Re: Looking for an electric guitar. Help me!

All beautiful guitars. I've def considered an epi riviera. maybe a casino.
 
Re: Looking for an electric guitar. Help me!

If you go used, you open your options up a bit. I'd recomend that you try to find an Ibanez Artstar, which was the series made before the Artcore models. An AS-120 would set you back around $600 used, and you'll have a bit left over for a pedal or two, and maybe a set of Duncans.

Here's the one I used to have...a set of Seth Lover pickups, and it was a tone machine.

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Re: Looking for an electric guitar. Help me!

for the record...the godin 5th avenues and the epi casino are not semi-hollows. they are full hollowbody archtops and a thinline hollowbody archtop respectively.
Both nice axes tho.
 
Re: Looking for an electric guitar. Help me!

If you are looking at a semi hollow on a budget I would recommend and Epiphone Sheraton. The run brand new about $500. This is a really good guitar and with a few minor mods they can be very good.

My question is why do you need electric & how loud do you need to play? Can't you put a pickup in one of your acoustic guitars?

An acoustic archtop is another alternative, but these being full hollow guitars will be harder to keep from feeding back. If you play fairly loud then the semi hollow is the way to go.

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I saw that you mentioned Casino's. The Casino is a full hollow with P90's. The problem you could potentially have with this is feedback, same as an archtop. There is a lot of air moving around inside & if you play with enough volume & gai it can be difficult to deal with.
 
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Re: Looking for an electric guitar. Help me!

Take a gander at some semi hollows from Schecter......Here's mine.

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Re: Looking for an electric guitar. Help me!

how do those washburns compare to the sheraton?
and what are the washburn J3(J5, J7)s like?
 
Re: Looking for an electric guitar. Help me!

let's see...

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those are the ones I would personally consider in your price range that I can think of off the top of my head.
 
Re: Looking for an electric guitar. Help me!

drew_half_empty said:
let's see...

those are the ones I would personally consider in your price range that I can think of off the top of my head.
Click to expand...

You're my new friend. ;)

mwalluk said:
Take a gander at some semi hollows from Schecter......Here's mine.

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Click to expand...

I've loved every Schecter i've played, but could never bring myself to buy one. Love the burst maple top on that though.
 
Re: Looking for an electric guitar. Help me!

Bludave said:
If you are looking at a semi hollow on a budget I would recommend and Epiphone Sheraton. The run brand new about $500. This is a really good guitar and with a few minor mods they can be very good.

I saw that you mentioned Casino's. The Casino is a full hollow with P90's. The problem you could potentially have with this is feedback, same as an archtop. There is a lot of air moving around inside & if you play with enough volume & gain it can be difficult to deal with.
Click to expand...

+1. Sheratons, Dots, Dot Deluxes, and Rivieras are well-made guitars. You can get a nice used one for around several hundred, get a set of Duncans, and have money left over. That's what I've done, and I get compliments on my tones every time I'm on stage. I saw Rusty Zinn live here last year (well known west coast blues player, plays with Kim Wilson and Mark Hummel among others) and all night he played an unmodded Riviera he bought used for $350 (I talked to him between sets). Sounded pretty good.

Casinos are also nice, and you can control feedback by watching where you stand (relative to your amp) and holding the strings when you're not playing. One of the secrets of hollowbodies and feedback is to turn the bass on your amp pretty low. It's that low end that gets things rumbling and howling.
 
Re: Looking for an electric guitar. Help me!

Another trick is to put blue painter's tape over the f holes, or get f hole plugs made if you want something more fancy.

Really ought to look at ES-333's IMO. I sold mine about three years ago for $900 with a hard shell case, and the guy wrote me about a year later just to say how thrilled he still was with it, and how much better it was than he ever expected when he bought it. It's higher than your budget, but for that little bit extra, you get a real Gibson. The difference between it and a 335 is that it has a flat finish and open coil pickups. Not the world's greatest guitar, but definitely a cut or two above the poly-finished foreign-made options IMO. The only reason I sold mine was to raise money for a camera for work. And because I mostly found myself playing my vintage 330 instead...a pretty obvious choice for most people.
 
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