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Yamaki Les Paul Custom - Black Beauty

IggyM

New member
Joined
Jan 3, 2020
Messages
2
Hello to all of you. I'm new to this forum and I bought myself a first LP guitar. I play Rickenbackers and had a Fender Stratocaster, but I traded (Korean) Strat for a Yamaki LP.
I would like to find how much similar is it to the real thing. What I learned so far:

Yamaki was a Japan company that mostly produced exact copies of Martin guitars. During 70's they started to produce copies of Strats and LP's.
The guitar has a set in neck, it is made out of mahagony (I think it is all mahagoby, no maple top). It is made at the beginig of 1977 (pickups are from 1974). As I can see, headstock is an open book model, the biding is also correct. Yamaki produced only 2 pickup versions and after some learning from peope connected to Yamaki company, this 3 pickup version could be the only one ever made, so it is a really rare instrument :)
The wiring is not connected as a standard 3 pickup LP, but to my opinion even more versatile. In top switch position she has a neck and middle pickup conneced, middle position all 3 pickups and bottom position middle and bridge pickup. In addition to that - every pickup has it's own volume pot and there is one master tone pot, so basicaly any combination of pickups can be selected or any single one.
It has 4,5 kg (arr. 10 pounds) and the sustain is just incredible. I have an JMI AC30 from 1964. In clean postion whey you strum a cord, it is like you have a compressor on it, the sound lasts forever :)
I will post some sound clips when I make some proper recordings. For now I'm thrilled with the sound. She sounds so jazzy, although I'm not much of a player. She has a kind of bell tone when you play it clean.
Regarding the pickups - i think they are ceramic and they relly have hot output - double than my Rickenbackers or Strat used to have. Maybe it would chime even more with some PAF replicas, but for now I wouldn't change a thing.

So, by the looks and descritpion, how does it compare to the real Gibson?
She has a fat neck wich I like because I have long finger. Where the necks on real Gibsons massive? I guess they tried to replicate Black Beaty from 50's...(It looks like a Peter Frampton copy). I have so much to learn about Gibsons now :)
Here are some pics:


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