What happened was, ever since the BB King Lucille landed, I've been kicking myself for not checking out an ES-333 first. I finally made a trip in to town just to "feeeel" one...
I tried out a faded brown one at my favorite local music store, and thought immediately that THAT neck was what I'd been looking for. Geez, I gotta get one of these...
To keep the wife involved, I let her pick the color - so, we have ANOTHER Blondie!
Money has changed hands, Lucille is now Mychael Moaze's "The KING!"
So, after just a quick once-over at the shop (I actually got to open the Gibson shipping box), we pay for it and it's, like, Come To Papa! But, once I get it home, right outta da box, get this: there's a screw missing on the bridge pickup mounting ring. So much for Gibson's eagle-eyed QC...
First thing, I went after the trussrod and bridge height. I had to notch out one of the saddles to get proper "arc"... While I had the strings off (changing from the factory .010's to my regular Ernie Ball .009's) I did a required MAJOR fret level - these things just are NOT setup well - and "down ramp" of the highest three or four frets - I've been doing the down-ramp thing on almost everything I touch, nowadays... Then, recut the nut - but this one was VERY CLOSE there, I guess I couldn't call my work much more than a slight "personalization" of it. So, the action was pretty close to where I want it, after an hour or so.
For vanity's sake, I swapped out the black knobs and mounting rings for gold speed knobs and cream rings. While I had the pups out to swap the rings, I opened 'em up and soldered in coil-shunt leads.
It came loaded stock with Gibson's 490R & 498T humbuckers, and this is the same set they put in the medium-priced Les Pauls. They weren't too shabby, tone-wise (now that I've added shunt leads), but...
I swapped the bridge pup out for a zebra Seymour Duncan JB and put a Jazz in the neck spot. Other hardware I've replaced would include a TonePros bridge and stop-tailpiece, and now have a set of Grover Rotomatic tuners on it.
Now, I know you've been waiting for this part...
The axe now has FOUR push/pulls: under the neck vol is the coil-shunt for both pups, the neck tone has the switch for series/parallel neck coils (overrides coil-shunt); bridge tone is series/parallel bridge coils (overrides coil-shunt), and the bridge volume does the series/out of phase option. Lotsa nice tones with this axe!
Take a peek at the wiring scheme...
And here's the tone chart in MS Word format.... Wuzzat, twenty pup combos? That'll do, for a little tonal variety!
Some notes on the stock pups: As with all the Gibbie humbuckers I've modified, to keep the screw coil active you have to shunt to HOT, not GROUND (same as Seymour Duncan). ALSO, I ran a couple of pieces of heat-shrink tubing over the pup's leads to insulate/isolate the traditional "braided shield" that these (and many) "vintage style" two-conductor pickups are wired with, so that it wouldn't short out when phase-reversed . Of course, all that is now moot on this axe, as I've swapped 'em out for the four-conductor Seymour Duncans. The original Gibson pickups are now loaded in a Les Paul Studio I rebuilt in '06, where I like them very much.
Fit and finish of this axe is just barely OK, EXCEPT for the rout for the control cavity - and geez, that's horrible! And to make it worse, someone went around the edge with, like, a black magic-marker or something to try and make the fact that the plastic cover is about 1/16" too small all the way around less visible - hey, pal, it didn't work! Vanity at work again, I painted the entire "shelf" (or "lip") of the control cavity opening flat black - now, THAT actually works to make it look better...
IMHO, the fit and finish of the MIK (Epi) stuff I've seen is MUCH BETTER than this Memphis stuff.
Oh well, I guess this WAS one of their low-end models - ya, MSRP at $1600!!!
But, don't get me wrong - this was an axe I'd been jonesin' for - it'll probably be at the top of the playing rotation for a long time to come. I'm very glad I finally picked one up (before they were discontinued!). It has that solid Gibson feel and sound, and of course, I love the access panel on the back - my gateway to mischief!
When I pulled this one out for our annual reunion, PalmJalm '04, and wouldn't ya know it, it was the only axe I played - ALL DAY LONG! Never picked up a Strat, the Gretsch, or even the Rickenbacker (no Beatles set that year). That's saying something!
Now that I'm gigging again, it has become my main stage axe...
BOTTOM LINE: Sez I, if you think you want one, can afford one, and can find one, GET ONE.
If you're like me, you'll be happy with it... solid axe, FOR THE MONEY.
And no ES-thinline has ever been easier to hot-rod!
