Agile AL-3000M

The 3000m is a variant of the Agile 3000 but this model has a thicker maple top. Agile guitars is a line of guitars made in Korea that are primarily sold out of the RondoMusic vendor. People started buying up these guitars when they realized how good the quality was and the great features you got for the price. With this guitar you get a 2 piece mahogany body with a 3/4 inch maple top. The body has natural maple binding to show this off. YOu get a set one piece mahogany neck with a 14 inch radius. The fretboard is ebony with 22 jumbo frets which is pretty unheard of at this price. You get two nice Alnico humbuckers and a volume and tone for each pickup. The tuners are are a set of high ratio Grovers and it has a standard tune-o-matic bridge.

UTILIZATION

The setup on these guitars is very nice for the price. The ebony fretboard is something you rarely get on a guitar at this price. There are 1000 dollar Gibsons that dont come with ebony fretboards. This Agile really shows how much the big companies are holding back. The guitar is not chambered so it is pretty heavy but this improves the tone. One thing odd about this model is that there is no binding on the neck. Other 3000 Agiles have binding on the neck. I think they did this because the body has natural maple binding so white binding on the neck may look out of place with the natural body binding.

SOUNDS

This guitar has a nice solid LP tone. It is better than any Epiphone you could get at the same price or double. The thick maple top adds a lot of chrispness to the sound on this guitar. It matches well with the thick low end the mahogany body provides. It the maple top adds clarity to the sound. This helps the pickups give a nice clear tone to when you are playing. People like the stock Agile pickups. I have seen people pay decent money for them 2nd hand. If about equal to a lower end Gibson pickup. They are much better than the pickups you get in a stock Epiphone. A swap of some high quality after market pickups will really let you explore the full potential of this guitar.

OVERALL OPINION

This is a great alternative to getting an Epiphone. The Epiphones you could get for the same price as this guitar are very subpar. Which this guitar you get good fit and finish a thick maple top and an ebony fretboard. There arent Epiphones with ebony fretboards and there are hardly any Gibsons for less than a 1000 dollars that have Ebony fretboards. Its not just that this guitar has an ebony fretboard it shows what guitar companies could really do for the money if they were willing to do it. They even throw in good brand name GHS strings from the factory. This shows you how much they care about their product.

The Agile AL-3000M is a Korean-made solid mahogany LP shaped guitar. It includes a maple-top with a triple bound body,and headstock with binding on the neck. The neck is 5 pieces of maple and walnut with an ebony fretboard. The fretboard has distinctive Abalone inlays. AL-3000 has 22 jumbo frets but they do not seem to be that large. It comes with two Alnico V humbucking pickups which provide a warm traditional tone. I would say they are medium output. The controls are standard LP fare with two volume and two tone controls. The construction has a good solid feel to it. What makes this guitar special is that is has neck through construction.

UTILIZATION

What makes this model special is that it has neck through construction. Neck through construction is pretty rare on guitars and even rarer on Les Paul style guitars. On typical Les Paul style guitars the neck is set into the body and glued in place. With this guitar and its neck through construction. The pieces of wood that make up the neck travel through the lenght of the body and the rest of the body is glued onto the neck. This construction is neck centric as opposed to bolt on or set neck construction where everything is attached to the body. This means this guitar has better upper fret access. Since the neck is not connected to the body at the normal point there is no large neck joint heel to get in the way of you playing on the higher frets. Also this construction means the guitar is stronger overall due to there not being any weak point where the neck joins to the body.

SOUNDS

Because of the neck through construction the tone of the guitar is a little different that that of a normal Les Paul. Neck through guitars provide a slightly brighter tone than other guitars due to the pickups and bridge and everything being on the same piece of wood as the neck. The pickups the guitar comes with are pretty average for a guitar of this price. It provides a classic sound through a Marshall. With the pickups it can become muddy at high gain. With the stock pickups it is best suited for a medium gain classic rock tone. If you are looking for a warm/thick sound this is what you are looking for. There is no single-coil twang to be found here. If you are looking to wake the guitar up a set of classic Seymour Duncans will help you get more of a classic sound.

OVERALL OPINION

Go try and ask Gibson for a neck through Les Paul and see what happens. They will either tell you to go away or charge you 10k for it. It is amazing that a little company like Agile can make this guitar with this construction and an ebony fretboard and less it less than a high end Epiphone. A Gibson that costs as much as this guitar wont have any ebony fretboard and no Les Paul to my knowledge came with neck through construction. Its pretty sad that the big companies can get away with not improving their designs for so long. There are so many better things that could be on guitars standard if people just allowed things to improve. Cars today are a lot better overall than cars 40 years ago why shouldnt guitars be better.