Here it is:
"E-LP-90LTC Review
Intro:
It arrived today, the guitar I have been waiting for!! An Edwards E-LP-90LTC in black to come knocking at my door! I have only been playing it for a couple hours so I will be updating this at the bottom with corrections if I change my mind or find out anything new. Enjoy!
Finish:
Ok the finish is quite an odd one here, it isn’t gloss but satin apparently, I was expecting more of a matt finish but I wouldn’t call this satin, it is more a mixture of satin and gloss. It is a nice touch because the neck isn’t as sticky as most Lp’s, but I still wouldn’t have minded it either way. The binding is what struck me at first - the thing is bloody flawless! Not one bubble, not one glue mark, not one area where the scr@ping has gone too far into the body or too far into the binding. Flawless. The nut is bound too which is a very nice addition. For me, there is a few ways of telling an exceptionally good finish, the corners of the headstock and anywhere that the binding joins itself i.e. the back corner of the guitar and where the body binding joins the neck. Again; beautiful. It beats the ObG on this, the headstock binding actually goes below the nut and covers the sides of it, it may be a small feature but it adds up! The frets were all fitted correctly and are exceptionally well done. As for the finish itself, I don’t know much about it, the guitar is from the ‘Lacquer taste’ series, so I don’t know if that means it is the traditional nitro-cellular finish or a new deviation from it. Sorry for the lack of info there! Whatever it is, its bloody nice!
Electronics:
For a guitar this cheap, its bloody astounding! A Seymour Duncan SH-4 (JB model) in the bridge and a SH-1n (59’ model) in the neck. Over here in the UK these cost about £70 each new if you don’t know where to look. These are good pickups, they aren’t to my tastes though, I could live with a JB in the bridge, it’s a nice balanced pickup, which can do a wide array of tones, but the neck leaves a lot to be desired. That may however be because I’m used to £90 hand wound Bare Knuckle Pickups in the neck of my ObG. The JB/59 combo is considered the ‘standard’ in replacement pickups and is quite popular in the guitar world and if you don’t want the hassle of replacing pickups, chances are you won’t need to. As for the other electronics, the 3-way toggle is top notch, the pots are fine and there are even ceramic disc caps for the tone pots (again, not a huge feature but it’s a sign of quality). I have also heard that you can de-solder the gold covers and get zebra open coiled pickups, but I’m not going to try that at this stage!
Playability:
From the box this guitar was a dream to play, even though the action is slightly high for my tastes. It came brand new with strings that weren’t stretched in so took a bit of wearing in to get the tuning stable. I’m pretty sure they are 10 gauge strings but I have no method of checking, they feel like 10’s anyway. It feels tougher to play with than the ObG at the moment, but that will be a combo of the slightly high action and new strings.
Machine heads & Hardware:
The gold keystone style tuning pegs have a ‘Grotoh’ marking on the back of them and look a lot like the ones on my ObG, the stop tail bar on the ObG in fact has Grotoh on the underside and I’m betting that the Edwards does too. The bars both are thicker and rounder than the standard Gibson ones but essentially do the same job. Either way, I really like the Grotoh hardware and would say it is top notch. I’m really picky when it comes to guitars and one thing that I thought was a cost cutting measure at first was the screws that they used to hold the strap pins in and the pickup rings in place. They aren’t gold coated, they are that yellow-y colour (I think it might be called Muntz metal, but I’m not sure) that you often get on those allen keys for building furniture (at this point I bet I’m loosing you lot!) but it was actually quite a cool idea for them to do so, let me explain!
On the ObG (which is 16 years old now) the screws surrounding the pickup rings have turned black with age and have started to erode, making it extremely difficult to remove them. I have allen keys from way over 10 years ago which show no signs of rust at all. If this is what I think it is for – well done Edwards!
Neck:
The neck compared to the ObG is pretty much the same, quite wide and chunky but feels ever so slightly thicker, it is a nice playing neck – great to grab hold of and bash out some powerful chords! It isn’t a fast neck like an Ibanez and if you want to shred all the time then this probably isn’t for you, but for lead and rhythm tones nothing can beat a Les Paul for my kind of music and the tone that I look for, and I can solo quite well on it because I’m used to it. It has a mahogany neck with an Ebony board and like most lp’s it has a set neck. I still haven’t checked whether it has a set neck or not, but I think it does. I’ll have to get back to you when I change the Pu’s.
Wood:
The guitar has a mahogany back with a hard maple top. This is where it gets really subjective! The tone is similar to the ObG, but seems more upper-mid defined unlike the lower mids of the ObG. The difference is only slight, and when playing live or even in the studio I doubt anyone would notice. In my opinion, if you have a good constructed guitar with good wood you have a winner. This guitar has excellent wood and excellent construction, this guitar IS a huge bargain, even considering the tax you have to pay to get them imported, if you visit Japan, you can get one of these for around £350, now doesn’t that just make you hate the fact you don’t live there!
Conclusion:
I’ve only been playing this guitar for a few hours, but there is no doubt it is a fantastic guitar with fantastic value! With this and the ObG combined, I would have had enough money for one Gibson Les Paul standard and that is including the money I spent on upgrading the pickups (£130 on the ObG, £160-190 aprox on the Edwards, but the SD pickups will get at least £80 when I sell them!). Out of the Gibbo LP’s I have played, these two both kick their collective asses.
$%&# you Gibson, I’m going to live in Japan!"
Pics comming soon, any questions feel free. I'm a happy bunny at the moment :D
-Will
