New Guitar Day: Agile Interceptor 725, My First Seven String Guitar

So it finally happened.  For those who know me, know I started my musical life in 1988.  That's when I picked up and learned to play the cello.  In 1998, I bought my first guitar, and started playing it.  But now, in the year 2019, I bought my first seven string guitar.

I had been wanting one for a while.  I mean, I don't play Korn or anything that would require a seven string, but I had been wanting one just so I could scratch that musical itch.  One thing that kept me from purchasing a seven string was the cost and availability.  There's just not that many manufacturers that make seven strings.  So the decently made seven string guitars on the market are a bit pricy.

The other thing I kept running into was that a lot of them had Floyd Rose tremolos.  And honestly, I didn't want to deal with that if I didn't have to.  Also, a lot of seven string guitars tend to be really pointy and 80's looking.  I wanted to avoid that as well.  So it's good that I know what I want, but I've really painted myself in a corner with what I want.

I was searching on Facebook Marketplace when I saw a seller offering an Agile 725 Interceptor seven string guitar.  We agreed to meet at Guitar Center so I could test it out.  Long story short, I was more than happy with it and bought it from him.  Here's the photos:

The 725 model refers to a 25.5 inch scale length.  The 727 model refers to a 27.5 inch scale length.  I know a lot of players would prefer the longer scale length, but I found the shorter/standard length to be just fine.

There were a few nice upgrades on this guitar when I bought it.  First up, someone had installed the Seymour Duncan AHB-3 Blackouts active pickup set.  The fret numbers are actually aftermarket stickers attached to the fretboard.

I personally love the blue/green color.  It's not a standard death metal color.  Remember when I talked about painting myself into a tiny little corner with what I wanted?  Well, this color is the perfect color for me.

I also changed the knobs to a green abalone set that I had sitting in my drawer for a few years.

They are a perfect match for this guitar.  Although technically, the chrome should be black to match the black hardware, but I'm not sweating it.

The guitar did need a set-up, but overall it was about 95% the way there.  The truss rod had never been set.  I only had to turn it a very small amount for it to be perfect.  I also moved the pickups closer to the strings.  It's very important to do that with active pickups.  Here's how I did that with direct mount pickups.

As you can see, the pickups are not as close as they should be to the strings.

So I took some foam padding, cut it into shape, and put it underneath the pickups.

Now let's take a look.

Yeah, that's much better.

I was aiming to fret-dress the guitar, but all notes are nicely playable.  Even with the strings being really close to the frets.  Heck, I haven't even changed the strings yet.  I have to say I love the sound.  Once I played it for the first time I just felt something come over me.  I immediately had to play angry music.  It feels like a new musical door opened for me.  I'm going to have to see what's through that door.

For those who are interested in Agile Guitars they can be ordered directly from the manufacturer.  Here's the link:

https://www.rondomusic.com/

New Guitar Day: Agile 2500: Not Impressed

It finally happened.  I had a bad "New Guitar Day."  It was bound to happen sometime in my lifetime.  But some of this is on me.  Let me start at the beginning.

As I was looking over the Rondo Music website, home of Agile Guitars, I saw a B-Stock guitar that was exactly what I was looking for.  It was a Les Paul style guitar with P-90's.  I didn't want the P-90's so much as I wanted the P-90 route.  I was going to put mini-humbuckers in it.

It's easier to find a Les Paul style guitar with P-90's than mini-humbuckers.  Since I was going to change pickups anyway, even if it had mini-humbuckers, I looked for the best deal I could find.  Unfortunately, that came to bite me in the butt.

So this blue flamed, Les Paul styled guitar was actually marked down quite a bit in price.  It was considered B-Stock due to some damage on the fingerboard.  I thought, "Well, that's nothing.  I'm sure to accidentally bang it around in the first week.  It's going to have more dings than that in a short time."

So I bought it at a greatly discounted price due to the damage and finish imperfections.  When I received the guitar I had so much going on I didn't actually play it.  I took it out of the box, and put it on my workbench.  I then went out of town for a few days.  So I had it for a bit before even getting to mess around with it.

Once I played it I noticed the action was insanely high.  I thought, "Well, it probably just came from South Korea, and no one has even looked at it.  No matter."  But matter it did.  Usually when I start work on a guitar I do everything at once.  This was no different.

I started with a fret dress.  I then removed the P-90 pickups.  I realized to fit the mini-humbuckers I would have to do a few modifications.  Namely, I needed to cut holes in the route so that the pickup feet would fit.

Here is what it looked like after I cut the holes for the feet:

I also had to drill holes for the mini-humbucker pickup rings.  (Note: not pictured.)  That took a bit of time and effort as the rings just barely covered the hole.

After a lot of back and forth I managed to get the mini-humbuckers installed, I started to set the guitar up.  That's when I noticed I was having problems with frets, 14, 15, and 16.  I still had dead spots.

I couldn't figure out why that would be.  That is, until I looked down the neck.  It was then I discovered that where the neck met the body, the heel was kicked up.  I was instantly furious.  Not just at myself, but at Rondo Music for letting that guitar out of the factory.

For those who know me, know I worked as the repair department for Dean Guitars.  At Dean we never would have let a guitar like that be sold, even as B-Stock.  It should have been marked at X-Stock, stripped of it's parts, and the body destroyed.

I wrote Rondo Music since they don't have a publicly listed phone number.  I told them I had modified the guitar, but since it shouldn't have been sold in the first place, could I return it?  Frankly, I received a lot of attitude in the message back.

I wrote explaining that I was, in fact, a luthier who actually went to luthiery school, and apprenticed under a master luthier.  I told them that guitar should have never left the factory.  I'll admit, I told him that when I received the guitar, the strings were so high you could shoot arrows off of it.  Of course, they had the action that high so it would make the 14th, 15th, and 16th frets playable.

What I received back was an E-mail critical of my skills.  It also stated that they dealt with 50,000 guitars, and knew what they were doing.  Also, if I had bought a Ford or Chevy, modified it, and tried to return it, would the dealer accept that return?  He didn't think so.  But he finished the e-mail saying, just return it, and they would see what they could do.  He wasn't promising anything.

I'll admit, I was pretty hostile.  The e-mail was written in a very nasty tone.  So I went to work on the guitar.  I took the mini-humbuckers out, and reinstalled the P-90's.  It was then a thought occurred to me.  If I sent it back, they would just try to set it up and then send it back to me.  Well, since they did such a shitty job the first time, why would I trust them to do it a second?

So I set the guitar up to where it would be playable.  That way, if they said, "Nothing was wrong with it," I would know they didn't even try.  That, or they have some really lazy and incompetent people working there.  So I set it up.

I raised the action on the high E (treble) side.  I had both sides at 2/32nd's.  That basically what I set a Floyd Rose equipped guitar to.  That way, players can dive bomb or pull back as far as possible and it won't fret out.  Would you know that just raising it that much cleared it enough so that all notes were playable?  Again, I was furious at myself for not trying that earlier.  I just got into too much of a hurry.

So now I had a dilemma.  If I sent the guitar back, they would look at it, play it, and say there's nothing wrong with it except for the holes I drilled in it.  They would then just send it back to me leaving me in the same place I was before.

So after consulting a friend I decided that I wouldn't return it.  When it comes down to it I modified the guitar.  After fret-dressing and setting the guitar up correctly there was nothing Rondo Music could do with it.  I doubt I was going to get a refund, so why bother trying to return it?

So I wrote a very straight-forward e-mail saying, "After continuing work on it, I made the guitar playable.  Since I had modified the guitar I understand I couldn't return the guitar for a refund."  I left it at that.  I also received a very simple return message that said, "Thanks for the update."

Now, I understand I should have looked the guitar over before I started work on it.  I'm just so used to performing all my work at once.  I've found there's not much I can't do, but I'm used to working on guitars that would pass a basic inspection.

What upsets me is the way the e-mails were worded.  They came across as pretty nasty.  I mean, I'm actually a returning customer.  That's right.  I bought an Agile guitar four years ago.  I wrote a blog about it.  Here it is:

New Guitar Day: Christmas Edition

So it's not like I've never dealt with Rondo Music before.  I like my Root Beer colored Agile.  I thought it was a better quality guitar than any of the comparable South Korean made Epiphone Les Paul's.  But this blue 2500 fell far from the tree.

And the lousy thing is I put the P-90's back in it.  I have been working myself back up to putting the mini-humbuckers back in it, but I just haven't had the motivation.  In fact, I forgot to take photos of the guitar with the mini-humbuckers in it, hence, why none are posted on this blog.

Eventually I will get around to installing the mini-humbuckers.  After I do that I'll post a blog reviewing them.  The pickups I bought were a set of Alnico 2 mini-humbuckers by Artec.

Again, what upsets me about this guitar is the way I was treated, and that Rondo Music would let a guitar like that leave their factory.  I have it playing alright, but it should be so much better.  I'm also hoping that the kick up at the heel doesn't get worse with time.  Right now, I'm not sure I will ever buy from Rondo Music again.

New Guitar Day: Christmas Edition

It's that time of year again.  Time for gifts and all that fun stuff.  But I decided to give a gift to a most special person in my life.... me.  I'm so good to me. 

But all funny (or unfunny) jokes aside, there was a type of guitar that I had been wanting for a long time.  I had always wanted a Les Paul style guitar with P-90's in it.  Getting a Gibson was out of the question due to price, so I turned to Epiphone.  They made (they just stopped making it) a version of the 1956 Les Paul that only came in Gold or Black.  I honestly wasn't too crazy about it.  Gold guitars do nothing for me, and black guitars show every fingerprint and spec of dust that comes near them.

So a few of the members on the Dean Guitars and Seymour Duncan forums had spoken about how much they liked Agile Guitars.  The factory that Epiphone used to have their Les Pauls made in was now making the guitars for Agile.  Just to be clear, Epiphone moved their production to an Epiphone only factory in China.  The factory in South Korea, where the Agiles and other guitars are made, has been making guitars for decades, and with the new CNC machines they have been doing a great job.

So I look through their offerings.  Honestly, their website is a bit cheesy, but their inventory looks pretty good.  Then I see it.  A Les Paul style guitar in a root beer finish with a flame maple veneer.  It also had P-90 pickups.  I knew I had to have it, so I got it with a tweed style case.  This one was the last one left.  I was aiming to wait a few weeks to get it, but I couldn't take the chance that I would miss out on buying it.

 
I had some Seymour Duncan P-90's from a previous project that I never got around to using.  So once I did a set-up, I installed the pickups.  I used the SP-90-2 for the neck, and the SP-90-3 for the bridge.  The neck pickup has an almost piano like quality to it.  The bridge pickup just sounds like a bigger P-90.  Due to it's specs, I was hoping for a distortion like pickup, but it just sounded bigger.  I was expecting it to have a bigger bottom end, but it was actually pretty balanced. 

The funny thing is that I have an Epiphone Les Paul plain top pretty close to this color.  They call it honeyburst.  It has a bit of honey color in the middle, but the rest of the burst is root beer color.  So they look like twins.  The Epiphone has humbucker pickups in it. 

I will say that the Agile has a few upgrades from the Epiphone.  It has some sort of ebony fretboard instead of rosewood.  It also has a type of graphtech like saddles on the bridge.  The only thing that was not as good or better than the Epiphone was the three way switch.  They used one of the ones that makes a "clinking" sound when switched. 

What's weird is that even the necks are almost identical on them.  The weight is about the same too.  I may have to do a second blog showing the two of them together.  Just to show just how much alike they are.

So if you are thinking about an Epiphone type guitar, check out Agile Guitars at Rondo Music online.  They have a bunch of different types of guitars, so you can find something you like.  The good news is that they sell direct to customer so they are cutting out the middle man.  My guitar cost 60% of what an Epiphone guitar would have, and the Agile is better quality.  Also, the hardshell cases are about half of what a case would run you at Guitar Center.  So take a peek, and see if you find something you like.