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Hatsubai « Slightly changed from the older years »
Published on 11/20/11 at 16:36One interesting thing about these older years is that they weren't exactly as consistent with the overall neck shapes, as well as weight and a few other things. The guitar I'm reviewing is a 72, so yours might vary from this review. The guitar features a mahogany body with a maple top, mahogany neck with a rosewood fretboard, 22 frets, trapezoid inlays, pickguard, binding, hard tail bridge, two P90s, two volumes, two tones and a three way switch.
UTILIZATION
I noticed that these guitars tend to have some fretwork and nut issues. The frets can sometimes have level issues which will cause issues with you start to lower the action. If you notice some fretting out on certain frets, this is probably a good indicator that you need to get your frets leveled. The edges can sometimes be sharp, too. The nuts can also be problematic at times. If you ever tune your guitar and notice some odd sort of ping, then the guitar goes sharp, your nut is binding. You'll need to get your nut recut if that's the case.
SOUNDS
The guitar sounded pretty good, but I couldn't help think that it wasn't quite as "Les Paul" sounding. The bridge has some nice bite to it while remaining fairly thick sounding. You could easily do everything from blues to heavy metal with this thing. The neck pickup had a nice vowely tone, but I prefer hotter and smoother neck pickups. Rolling down the tone knob helped get the fattness I wanted, but it still didn't have that "oomph" that I like.
OVERALL OPINION
The back of this guitar was just torn to shreds thanks to the previous owner. I'm not sure if he was wearing a belt all the time or what, but the finish was just flaking off of this thing, and it had a lot of gouges on the back. In fact, it reminded me a lot of the famous Sykes guitar in the way it was worn on the back, but I'm not sure that was intentional as it didn't have any other telltale signs of Sykes fandom. Keep that in mind when buying these older guitars.
UTILIZATION
I noticed that these guitars tend to have some fretwork and nut issues. The frets can sometimes have level issues which will cause issues with you start to lower the action. If you notice some fretting out on certain frets, this is probably a good indicator that you need to get your frets leveled. The edges can sometimes be sharp, too. The nuts can also be problematic at times. If you ever tune your guitar and notice some odd sort of ping, then the guitar goes sharp, your nut is binding. You'll need to get your nut recut if that's the case.
SOUNDS
The guitar sounded pretty good, but I couldn't help think that it wasn't quite as "Les Paul" sounding. The bridge has some nice bite to it while remaining fairly thick sounding. You could easily do everything from blues to heavy metal with this thing. The neck pickup had a nice vowely tone, but I prefer hotter and smoother neck pickups. Rolling down the tone knob helped get the fattness I wanted, but it still didn't have that "oomph" that I like.
OVERALL OPINION
The back of this guitar was just torn to shreds thanks to the previous owner. I'm not sure if he was wearing a belt all the time or what, but the finish was just flaking off of this thing, and it had a lot of gouges on the back. In fact, it reminded me a lot of the famous Sykes guitar in the way it was worn on the back, but I'm not sure that was intentional as it didn't have any other telltale signs of Sykes fandom. Keep that in mind when buying these older guitars.