Saturday 19 January 2008

action man

LesPaul

Decided to lower the action on the Les Paul, so wound down the bridge a little and then tweaked the intonation to bring things back on track. It's now a much more playable guitar - well for my liking.

The guitar is a cheap, Gibson Les Paul copy made by Summco and at only sixty odd quid, is a fantastic instrument and extremely playable. It comes, like most off-the-shelf guitars do, with a reasonably high action, which for me was too high for lead playing. I'm also planning to try lighter gauge strings, probably a set of nines. Which is what I use on my strat (my main guitar).

I also fitted a Jim Dunlop Straplok, as I hate it when in mid session the strap comes loose and you're left stood there clutching the guitar and looking rather foolish. I know there are cheaper strap locking systems around than the Dunlop ones, but I've used them for years and have them fitted to some of my other guitars and they've never let me down yet. And it's handy to be able to swap straps over to one of the other guitars. On the subject of straps, I do find it difficult to find straps that I like. I do like the standard Fender straps, but I feel it's not really appropriate to put one on a Les Paul style guitar - although I do have one on my Epiphone acoustic - sacrilege!

No comments: