Sucker that I am for Suproish/Valcoid planks and Charlie Christian-style pups (wish Barden had retained the style of the orig CC blade pup Danny G channeled with), and a great price at GC (Satan's occasional alterna-anus), I bought one of these three years ago. LOVED the tones (6 posi. switch) which "huged/thicked" or Tele-ed or sparkled, spanked, Stratted or Soap-barred brutally (at the bridge), but I had probs w/intonation initially (I like close-voiced and/or bizarrojazz chords with the occassional unresolved dissonances, and the standard stop-bar and set was less than minutely accurate), so I stopped by a wizard tech (ex-Big F Custom Shop) who did his wizzo stuff on the set up, swapped in a better jack, and installed a brass-cast nickelplated stop-bar w/adjusto section for the G and B strings being made by a friend of his, auditioned strings and decided Gibbo's Les Pauls 10 set did the deal right, and YEEEeee DOGGggies do it sound right dangersome now---quite an amazing variety of clean tones and fairly detailed-yet-grainy voice and, ODed and/or through a quality tremo amp it NAILS that tone ol' Elmo(re) had on "Talk to Me, Baby" (one of the BEST songs he evah waxxed, IMNSHO).Those pups can SLAAAMM an amp, get guhREEEEEAAaazzzy, or SLAAAMMM(!), and also do wiry sparklation.
In brief, it is a sadly overlooked git that, w/ proper set-up (and MAYBE a bridge replacement if the bog standard one doesn't meet your ear...the Chandler bro Paul opined that the PRS style was also a good match, but that the stock Chan. bridge was based on the fact that the Electraslide was originally intended for slide and more rudimentary chording, so compromises were made....I like slide, but I NEVER use this for that) is worth the $600 I paid (w/ an SKB hardshell Les P-style case thrown in).The after-purchase work came in under $70. Such a deal.
Now, a caveat; play it in the store to make SURE all the switches work--one I played had a dead pup, another had a drop-out in two selection positions, a third had an hellacious crackle/grounding "untidiness", but the 4th was the charmcharm-effinMOLTO-mojo charm.
Oh yeah, light-weight and resonant, the scratch-plate looks like an MOT reso-cover---it's not, but I think it's covering a lot of routing, and the neck and fretwork is verrah comfy.
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