It arrived yesterday. This one is complicated. GC only listed it in "fair" condition, so I expected significant issues. On unboxing, I saw significant wear on the handle of the case, but the case is in very good condition. I take this as a sign of considerable use but not abuse.
One of the first things I noticed on the guitar was that someone had drilled for a righty pickguard on this poor lefty. This is one of my pet peeves. There are tons of righty guitars, and I see no reason for righties to do this to lefties. Leave the few lefties out there for people oriented for them, eh? I have a word for people who do this, and it's not nice. And this is not even the second lefty I have bought mangled in this way. Just stop it already. If I keep it, I'll have to fill and repair it, and it will still be noticeable. If I don't keep it, someone else gets to deal with that disappointment. </rant>
Moving on... It was pretty grungy so I cleaned it up a bit, looked it over, and straightened out the very badly mounted pickguard. I guess whomever played it righty was the person who put this pickguard back on sloppily before trading it in. I plugged it in and tuned it up.
Awkwardly, most of the strings were close to tune, except the high e, which was tuned down a few steps. The guitar had a nice tone and I started getting into it, but it went out of tune fast. After a few retunes, I realized it was mostly the high e going out of tune, and always going flat. I thought bad tuner, and then the e string popped off the tailpiece without its ball end. Well that could explain the tuning issue, LOL. I broke out a replacement string for it, and while I was at it I restrung the b string because it looked horribly wrapped and was slipping a bit. There were no more tuning issues and I played it for hours after that.
I tried a lot of different stuff on this guitar, and I have to say I am incredibly impressed with its tone. About half-way in, I took out my Epiphone Casino to A/B against it so I could tell whether or not my ears were lying to me. Nope, the Songbird's pickups are clearer, richer, and a bit hotter than the Epi's. They don't lose any nuance. The dynamics are awesome, and this would likely be my most resonant electric by a pretty good margin. I unplugged and played it acoustically, and it is almost as loud as a Larivee parlor guitar. Very nice. That's when I finally noticed the action was higher than I like and I brought it down. Still no fret issues anywhere, and now it plays extremely easy.
The pickup selector was a bit flakey on the neck pickup position, I gave it a quick shot of Deoxit from the top and worked it a few times, and it's working good as new. I gave the outside of the guitar a nice cleaning, maybe the first it has had in a long time. I vacuumed out the case too. After day 1, I like the tone much more than my Casino, at least on a couple of amps I've tried and the two guitars should be in the same class. The Songbird also plays better than the Casino. I value play and sound much more highly than cosmetics.
Having stronger pickups, I thought maybe it was more like the B&G Little Sister, so that guitar came out for an A/B test next. I set them to similar output levels, which turned out meaning I was diming the Little Sister and pulled the Songbird back to about 8.5 on each pickup. In this range, their pickups are quite similar, but the difference between Little Sister's semihollow body and Songbird's full hollowness was stark. In-your-face different. In spite of its ability to rock, the Little Sister sounds refined, tempered, well mannered. Playing the same pieces, the Songbird sounds unbridled, wild. I don't think that difference is in the pickups very much. I think it's in how they react to the resonance of the body they're in. And I have to say I love them both for what they are doing. I often thought the Little Sister might be better if it was more "woody", and the Songbird is doing just what I was imagining. It's more out-of-control, but in a very good way. It adds a richness to the tone that I honestly have been looking for, not for every piece, but for some. This guitar is doing what I hoped the Casino would. And to be honest, the Casino was doing it to a good degree. It was satisfying. But the Songbird is showing the Casino how far that can go. It makes me wonder about changing the Casino's pickups, but I might not. Between these 3 guitars, I have 3 distinct hollow P90 combinations and maybe having those choices available is better. Regardless, the Songbird is here to stay.
I imagine the GC employee who listed it thought the high e string coming unwound was a bad tuner. I did at first, too. The b string was slipping in the tuner and I had to restring it to stay in place. So yeah, a guitar that wasn't holding tune might be a problem. And the pickup selector cutting in and out on the neck pickup might have meant needing a new switch. And the way dogear pickups are, you have to adjust the bridge height if you want more distance from the pickups. You can't lower the pickups. So that was probably why the action was high - to sound the way the previous owner wanted. And it was grungy, needed cleaning. It had been wiped down, but not cleaned for a very long time. It actually cleaned up pretty well and it set up great. But without addressing these things, that accounts for GC listing it as only "fair". It seemed like a high-action, can't-stay-in-tune grungy guitar with a bad switch. Nope, just not cared for.
Fit and finish wise, I can't fault the guitar in any way. Except for the poly finish, it is as good, if not better than my Gibsons. I wish I had found it in mint condition, but I still can't let this one go. It is a great one.
