Japanese Les Pauls Pretty Inside and Out

Today I had some fun putting Harmonic Design Z90 pickups in my History Les Paul clone. These are P90-style pickups, made to fit a humbucker hole.

I noticed a few things.

First of all, the Japanese use pretty dubious electronics. The potentiometers were very small, and the tone capacitors were super-cheap ceramics. I keep reading complaints about cheap tone capacitors. It’s hard for me to believe they make a difference, but you can get very good Vishay capacitors for about $3.00 each, so what’s the point in going cheap?

Second thing: the woodwork is even better than I thought. The guitar is a solid piece of very nice mahogany with a thick maple cap and a very thin piece of sycamore veneer. It’s not as expensive as a high-end Les Paul with a cap of fancy wood and no veneer, so I thought there might be some difference in the instrument’s performance. Now that I’ve seen the inside of it, I tend to doubt the veneer makes a difference.

The cavities in the guitar are finished very well, and they’re painted with what looks like shielding paint, and the plastic covers have metal foil in them. Most expensive guitars look pretty bad once you open them up. This one shows a surprising level of meticulousness.

The pickups did not work. At least the bridge pickup didn’t. Someone who tried the guitar a month or two back told me something about a problem with the selector switch, but I think the real problem was the bridge potentiometer. I tested everything as well as I could, and I believe the bridge potentiometer is shot. Maybe it’s corrosion from the Japanese climate. The other pot acts funny, too. The resistance goes infinite when you turn it to 10.

I went to a website and found myself some full-size American pots to replace the small Japanese ones. The cavity is big enough. I ordered four. Why wait for the tone pots to poop out? I ordered some Orange Drop capacitors, too. I’ll stick this stuff in the guitar, and I may fix the wiring so pickups can be switched without soldering. Might as well. I don’t think you need soldered connections in a guitar. After all, the cord is the biggest connector, and it has solderless jacks on each end.

This has taught me a little bit about Japanese guitars. If I were buying a new Les Paul clone, I’d order a Fujigen gold top off Rakuten for about a thousand dollars. At that price point, you get Japanese wood and Japanese electronics. American electronics add over $300 to the price. I’d dump the Japanese electronics and pick the American electronics myself. For $60, I’d have something better than the higher-end guitar. And because I’ve seen the guts of Fujigen Les Pauls, I think I could be confident that the instrument itself was top quality.

I’m not sure, but I think a person who did this would end up with an instrument surpassing a Custom Shop Les Paul, for under $1500. I don’t know enough about Gibsons to say. I do know Fujigen has better quality control, so when you buy one over the web, it’s not the crapshoot a Gibson would be. If you got one with a flamed top instead of gold, you’d have veneer, which (I assume) is not what you get from the Gibson Custom Shop, but with a gold top or a black guitar, who cares? I doubt Gibson is putting bookmatched flamed or quilted maple under gold and black paint.

I believe you have to go with the Custom Shop to get a Gibson with a properly set neck with a long tenon, but that’s not the case with Fujigen products. I think they find it difficult selling cheap woodwork to discerning Japanese consumers. This is the country where they used to buy American cars, take them apart, fix the problems, put them together, and THEN sell them.

I may be nuts, but it’s starting to look like a smart consumer buys Japanese wood and American electronics, unless he’s willing to pop for a used top-tier American guitar in great shape.

It’s sad that you have to become a luthier in order to make an electric guitar work, but I guess it’s better than the hassle and expense of paying other people to do the work.

Maybe I’ll post photos when I get the electronics fixed.