Great comparison! All sounded really good. I feel like the Greco without the pickup covers would make it sound brighter, though they're probably still higher output pickups. I just got a Burny RLC-60 recently and I absolutely love it. I have a Gibson LP Standard I bought new in 2002, which I love, but I find myself playing the Burny a lot more... There's just something about the feel of that guitar, and I love the more vintage voiced pickups. I drive my amps pretty hard with a lot of distortion, but the Burny pickups kind of tame the amp a bit and bring clarity and sweetness to the amp while removing some of the fizz. These MIJ Burnys from the 80s and 90s really are some great deals.
Shit sounds like same pickups in all 3 guitars. Such a slight difference if you didn't hear them back to back to back. Would it matter. Not to me. Man what a collection. Awesome.
All 3 guitars sound very good, each one a little different with the Greco sounding the darkest however there definately wasnt a $20,000 difference. Thanks for sharing., all 3 are amazing guitars!
Wearing Air Pods watching this I liked the Greco pick ups the best to be honest. The Burny and Gibson sounded almost identical to me. There's a Burny LP Custom for sale down the street for $1k. Tempting....
I'd say advantage Greco for cutting through the mix. The SCREAMIN' pickups are a good approximation of a nice pair of overwound 70's T-tops, which at least in my book are the trademark sound of 70's Classic Rock.
@@metalhead140 Agreed! No need to spend $15-20 grand on a 69' when you can get yourself a Burny or Greco and tweak the amp settings to get to the same place tonally if you ask me :)
I’m not saying the Gibson sounded bad. But I do think that both the Burny and the Greco seemed to have more character and richer sound. The Gibson seemed to have a bit of a dead tone
I don’t know what difference there is between the price of these 3? Sound wise they all sounded very similar, barely a rizla width between them. So if you’re looking to play and practice the cheaper option is a good idea. I do own a 68/69 Gibson Les Paul custom btw.
The Greco would’ve been worth around $800, the Burny about $1200, and my early ‘69 is probably around $20-$25k? They all sounded great. Except for my ‘69, I really loved the Burny!
The initial prices for the Greco and the Burny were (almost) the same - 60,000 vs. 65,000 JPY (RLC-65 started out as RLC-60). They are both parts of the "replica war" (which is a continuation/escalation of the 1970s "copy war"), when Fernandes, Kanda Shokai, Yamano, ESP, Tokai et al started a fierce competition in the mid-price sector of the Japanese domestic market - vintage specs and appointments just like the real thing...at prices only slightly above the "lookalike" copies. IMO Fernandes (Burny) came out on top of this in the LP sector, my early 80s RLC-60 has details/quirks of original late 50s Customs that most people probably don't know or ever notice, like the neck having just a hint of a V-profile, same-spacing PAF-replicas with the hotter one in the neck position and of course the all-mahogany construction of pre-Norlin-era Customs. The competitors just didn't match that at 60,000JPY. That's one reason why prices for early 80s Burnys (like the split-diamond RLC-60) have started going through the (still low-ish) roof, people are currently asking $1,600-1,800 for those on Reverb.
Hey, are you sure that is a MIJ Greco? Looks like it might be cor-tek korea one. But im not sure hard to tell. The pickup cavity would tell you for sure. metal braided wires MIJ normal wires with plastic cor-tek. Also the routing shape is different.
Do you have any source to back that up? Neither Burny nor Greco pickups have listed these specifications (or at most in Kanji numerals), you need a Gaussmeter to make a coarse guess on what they are. Anyway, it is highly unlikely that Burny derived that much from the PAF specs on a higher grade replica, in fact the manufacturers were pretty obsessed with nailing the original PU specs, if that's even possible considering that particularly early PAFs could contain any flavor of Alnico..
PS: I can see where that comes from, people try to tell ceramic from Alnico by the color and by sound - which is both prone to fail since the difference is whether or not the black-ish cast was cut and/or polished. One way to tell ceramic and Alnico apart is conductivity, and that Brazilian site (which is not the most correct source in the world) claims that "Screamin" PUs are ceramic, but that's not true for all of them. Re the VH-3, see above, also all Fernandes catalogs state that the RLC-65/later -70 has VH-3 PUs in the description near the pics and lists VH-4 in the specs table, so even that is rather ambiguous.
I'll throw my 2 cents in - I have about 20 MIJ guitars ( mostly Les Paul copies ) from the " Golden Age " of Japanese guitar building. If you had an early to mid 80's Burny ( Kasuga factory is my favorite in that era, although the Matsumoku ones are pretty great too ) RLG/RLC, and a Greco Super Real or Mint Collection from the same era with higher end pickups ( although 'Screamin" are pretty good ), the comparison may be a better one. There would still be differences of course but that would make a little more sense to me. Greco didn't even have a higher end Les Paul copy in the '90's catalogues as they were getting out of that market ( which is what that Greco appears to be ). Mostly Fugijen made but I think there were a few Dynas in there as well. And an early 80's Tokai LS80 or higher would also be nice to compare. Thanks for doing this - nice to see/hear the comparison
I think both Japanese guitars are able to stand on par with the 69'. I just got a 1980 Greco EGF-850 the other day that I will be comparing to the 69' along with a 1980 Navigator LPS 250 in another video :)
All three guitars are worth it! For clean sounds, Burny comes out front, and Greco has a wide range, Gibson is surprisingly mediocre. When it comes to crunch and distortion sounds, Gibson's boxy sound is pleasant and I think it's a classic.
as long as you don't mount same pickups, electronics and fret on all the three guitar, they obviously sound different from each other. Anyway greco is closer to gibson than burny. Burny and Greco has more sustain to me.
They all sounded great. And all LOOKED the part too! Do the Burny and Greco have ebony fretboards? Looked like it in the video. I'm on the hunt for a MIJ Les Paul Custom with an ebony board. The Greco doesn't happen to still be for sale does it?
Hey man, I sold the Greco a year ago. That one had a Cortec board. It was my least favorite out of the guitars. The other two have remained in my collection. The 69' will be the last guitar to ever leave my collection.
they all sound good,fat and chunky,a few slightly different frequencies,tones,nothing radical,they all sound like lp to me.proving that the burny/greco arent better than the gibson,but are on par,and just as good,with the massive price difference,burny/greco for the win,tokai,bacchus,momose,combat,crews maniac also make lp copys as good or better than the real thing
Clean it’s the Gibson all the way. Both of the MIJ guitars are fine as-is clean but the Gibson was just a bit better. When you added dirt, the Greco bridge was my favorite as it was just a bit punchier to my ears. Overall the Burny was unique for all settings. No complaints. For nostalgia, the Gibson is the desirable instrument but if it boiled down to economics, the Greco would win out for me as don’t often play clean. Good demo. Very well done.
Great comparison! The cleaner clips make it obvious that the Gibby has somewhat less output, unless they were changed your '87 lighting bolt Burny have the (for some reason) less favored VH-3 or VH-4, which may or may not be slightly hotter (maybe it's just PU height?). The Burny is in all aspects incredibly close to the Gibson, much more than the Greco, part of that may or may not be that it has a maple cap like your Gibson,. The pre-1987 Burnys are closer to the late 50s models in this regard and ooze even more spanky/twangy Rock 'n Roll. :) OTOH, even though it was at the same price range as the Burny, a late 80s/early 90s (made between 2 Japanese economy crises) Greco EG-600 is actually a pretty low spec'd guitar in comparison and I'm quite surprised how much it shows in the PUs sounding less harmonic and spanky, with the tone developing less Custom-like after the attack. I take it the question if that's a $20,000 difference between any of the clones was a rhetorical one. ;)
@@ws6206 Very much so for the Burnys too, actually for most of the guitar industry in Japan back then. The economic tide turned the other way in the second half of the 80s and the insane competition in the more budget-oriented parts of the "replica war" (of which the Burnys are a good example) started petering out.
I thought it would be very close, my ears tell me the Burny killed it in first place. The Greco came a very close second. The Gibson last. The Gibson is good, but not as good as the others. Just because it is vintage and has an expensive brand name does not always mean it is the best. I have been luck to play 3 vintage Fender strats. My Custom Shop strat and my 1985 MIJ strat are way better than the 61/63/64 originals I tested, and way cheaper.
Am not entirely sure. I don't have it anymore. It was either a very late 80s one, or an early 90s one. It was more than likely made in Korea, and with a Cortec board
Pull the neck pickup out of the Burny and Greco, love to see the neck heal gap, every 70' and 80's i've owned was the same. Poor craftsman ship from mass production. Momose, Combat, Navigator and Aircraft are some high end MIJ. But you paid $$$ for them too..
The Gibson sounds best to my ears. But it's really all about pickups. Burnys are not renowned for having great pickups and that guitar would benefit (to my tastes anyway) with a swap to a clearer humbucker. Gibson pickups from just a few years later were also pretty dull.
The Burny VH1 pickups are actually held in quite high regard. I do agree that the pickups do matter (and patent sticker T tops are great pickups), but I do think the Burny sounded close to the 69’ when I did this test. I do also want to point out that pots and caps play a big part in the sound if you ask me :) the newer Burny’s that are made in China are probably not that fun to play or listen too, but these older Japanese ones from the late 70s to early 90s are really good 🤘🏻
No criticism of the guitars. They're fantastic. But I hear a pretty big difference with the pickups with very little difference with the Greco. I agree pot and cap values can make a difference, but I don't agree that the Burny pickups sounded close.@@AmnellAndreas
It's too bad that the Japanese built guitars that often surpass a lot of the guitars coming out of the Gibson and Epiphone factories nowadays. No offense, but personally I don't care about brand - I care about quality 🙂
@@AmnellAndreas hate to piss on your parade the whole Japanese thing is straight up bs its highly unlikely that Scott Lewis over at Epiphone and this new guy with Gibson are putting out garbage
Mojo, special, unique, has that thing, magic are all just excuses for selling guitars at exuberant extortionate prices, don’t get me wrong I own some old(er) instruments and ones that haven’t been played, but tone is what you dial in on your amp and pups can be specified to order, necks can be shaved to your suit, the rest of the guitar is because of its aesthetics we prefer. Don’t buy the Gibson.. the other two are superior in every way just not costs…. That’s my two rupees on it.
I probably wouldn't say the other two are superior to the 69' in any way. But they are both great guitars. But some guitars are more "special" (play better, resonate better, etc) than others. The Greco was the least special one for me and that's why I sold it. It just didn't feel good in my hands and lacked acoustic resonance that the Burny and Gibson has. And that is usually individual to each guitar. You can find a 200 dollar Squier that will resonate and play better than a 5000 dollar Fender Custom Shop for example :)
@@AmnellAndreas You’re right about $200 could be better than a $5k guitar, which sometimes is where the custom shop guitars and many of the Gibsons LPs were poor when leaving the factory. The MIJ Strats we’re always superior to US versions and back in the late 90s to mid 00s the MIM were even better than the US ones aswell, it definitely makes you think. For Gibson money I’d purchase a Heritage H150 (which I did) and you’ll be happy you did….
Great comparison! All sounded really good. I feel like the Greco without the pickup covers would make it sound brighter, though they're probably still higher output pickups. I just got a Burny RLC-60 recently and I absolutely love it. I have a Gibson LP Standard I bought new in 2002, which I love, but I find myself playing the Burny a lot more... There's just something about the feel of that guitar, and I love the more vintage voiced pickups. I drive my amps pretty hard with a lot of distortion, but the Burny pickups kind of tame the amp a bit and bring clarity and sweetness to the amp while removing some of the fizz. These MIJ Burnys from the 80s and 90s really are some great deals.
Shit sounds like same pickups in all 3 guitars. Such a slight difference if you didn't hear them back to back to back. Would it matter. Not to me. Man what a collection. Awesome.
the burny sounded dam good
All 3 guitars sound very good, each one a little different with the Greco sounding the darkest however there definately wasnt a $20,000 difference. Thanks for sharing., all 3 are amazing guitars!
Wearing Air Pods watching this I liked the Greco pick ups the best to be honest. The Burny and Gibson sounded almost identical to me. There's a Burny LP Custom for sale down the street for $1k. Tempting....
Getting a Burny RLC 60 next week, so excited 😊
My favorite MIJ made LP Custom!
How did it work out for you?
just found one last week, non original bridge pickup. It is a killer guitar
I'd say advantage Greco for cutting through the mix. The SCREAMIN' pickups are a good approximation of a nice pair of overwound 70's T-tops, which at least in my book are the trademark sound of 70's Classic Rock.
Greco was my pick too, though I liked the neck pup on the Gibby too.
To be honest they all sound good though, and close enough that you could make do with any of them.
@@metalhead140 Agreed! No need to spend $15-20 grand on a 69' when you can get yourself a Burny or Greco and tweak the amp settings to get to the same place tonally if you ask me :)
No burny sounded the best. Greco was probably the worst sounding of them 3 guitars. Facts
@@Hxrocks22 I totally agree. The Burny and the Gibson sound near identical.
I’m not saying the Gibson sounded bad. But I do think that both the Burny and the Greco seemed to have more character and richer sound. The Gibson seemed to have a bit of a dead tone
First glance, I thought the Gibson looked best. After hearing them, I liked the sound of the Greco. I wasn't expecting that.
My go to would be the Burny.
The bridge pickup on the vintage custom was really good sounding
Thank you so kindly. It is a very nice guitar overall, and probably my main player :)
They all sounded great since it's you playing them. That supro sounds killer too.
Lol, thank you my guy! They are all killer guitars. Love you brother! 💙❤
Great compersion, after finding out about mij les pauls 20 years ago i sins then sold all my gibsons and only have burnys.
Really ?
I don’t know what difference there is between the price of these 3? Sound wise they all sounded very similar, barely a rizla width between them. So if you’re looking to play and practice the cheaper option is a good idea. I do own a 68/69 Gibson Les Paul custom btw.
The Greco would’ve been worth around $800, the Burny about $1200, and my early ‘69 is probably around $20-$25k? They all sounded great. Except for my ‘69, I really loved the Burny!
The initial prices for the Greco and the Burny were (almost) the same - 60,000 vs. 65,000 JPY (RLC-65 started out as RLC-60). They are both parts of the "replica war" (which is a continuation/escalation of the 1970s "copy war"), when Fernandes, Kanda Shokai, Yamano, ESP, Tokai et al started a fierce competition in the mid-price sector of the Japanese domestic market - vintage specs and appointments just like the real thing...at prices only slightly above the "lookalike" copies.
IMO Fernandes (Burny) came out on top of this in the LP sector, my early 80s RLC-60 has details/quirks of original late 50s Customs that most people probably don't know or ever notice, like the neck having just a hint of a V-profile, same-spacing PAF-replicas with the hotter one in the neck position and of course the all-mahogany construction of pre-Norlin-era Customs. The competitors just didn't match that at 60,000JPY. That's one reason why prices for early 80s Burnys (like the split-diamond RLC-60) have started going through the (still low-ish) roof, people are currently asking $1,600-1,800 for those on Reverb.
Hey, are you sure that is a MIJ Greco? Looks like it might be cor-tek korea one. But im not sure hard to tell. The pickup cavity would tell you for sure. metal braided wires MIJ normal wires with plastic cor-tek. Also the routing shape is different.
Skulle inte kunna kolla det nu ändå. Sålde grunkan kort efter jag tog denna videon :)
I really sure that is a MIK made by cor-tek korea. I have the same model.
ギブソン擬達のコストパフォーマンスは凄い。
本当に !!!
I have 80s burny 3 pick up custom..has the the diamond in lays just like the gibson...love it.
They all sound great! Though important question is how do they feel?
Which one do you reach for when you feel like playing?
My go to is the 69’ haha. The Burny and Greco are recent acquirements, I’m keeping the Burny. The Greco is for sale though, but I bought it to sell ☺️
Great quality sounding guitars enjoy in good health
Thank you so kindly James 🤟🏻🙏
I think that only the Gibson has Alnico pickups. The Greco's Screaming are ceramic, the Burny's VH3 as well.
Is that so? Had no idea. They all sound very close to my ears 😊
Do you have any source to back that up? Neither Burny nor Greco pickups have listed these specifications (or at most in Kanji numerals), you need a Gaussmeter to make a coarse guess on what they are. Anyway, it is highly unlikely that Burny derived that much from the PAF specs on a higher grade replica, in fact the manufacturers were pretty obsessed with nailing the original PU specs, if that's even possible considering that particularly early PAFs could contain any flavor of Alnico..
PS: I can see where that comes from, people try to tell ceramic from Alnico by the color and by sound - which is both prone to fail since the difference is whether or not the black-ish cast was cut and/or polished. One way to tell ceramic and Alnico apart is conductivity, and that Brazilian site (which is not the most correct source in the world) claims that "Screamin" PUs are ceramic, but that's not true for all of them. Re the VH-3, see above, also all Fernandes catalogs state that the RLC-65/later -70 has VH-3 PUs in the description near the pics and lists VH-4 in the specs table, so even that is rather ambiguous.
I'll throw my 2 cents in - I have about 20 MIJ guitars ( mostly Les Paul copies ) from the " Golden Age " of Japanese guitar building. If you had an early to mid 80's Burny ( Kasuga factory is my favorite in that era, although the Matsumoku ones are pretty great too ) RLG/RLC, and a Greco Super Real or Mint Collection from the same era with higher end pickups ( although 'Screamin" are pretty good ), the comparison may be a better one. There would still be differences of course but that would make a little more sense to me. Greco didn't even have a higher end Les Paul copy in the '90's catalogues as they were getting out of that market ( which is what that Greco appears to be ). Mostly Fugijen made but I think there were a few Dynas in there as well. And an early 80's Tokai LS80 or higher would also be nice to compare. Thanks for doing this - nice to see/hear the comparison
I think both Japanese guitars are able to stand on par with the 69'. I just got a 1980 Greco EGF-850 the other day that I will be comparing to the 69' along with a 1980 Navigator LPS 250 in another video :)
And thank you for watching! I love the input, it's highly appreciated!
@@AmnellAndreas check that 850 for a braz board as 1980 is the year to get. Has the original PU-2 I'm guessing?
@@davisk1234 indeed it has those pups
@@AmnellAndreas I've had a EGF850 for last couple of years and its a beauty of a beast !
All three guitars are worth it! For clean sounds, Burny comes out front, and Greco has a wide range, Gibson is surprisingly mediocre. When it comes to crunch and distortion sounds, Gibson's boxy sound is pleasant and I think it's a classic.
No bad tones here !
Thank you Malcolm!
as long as you don't mount same pickups, electronics and fret on all the three guitar, they obviously sound different from each other. Anyway greco is closer to gibson than burny. Burny and Greco has more sustain to me.
Interesting! I thought the Burny sounded closer to the Gibson and that the Greco sounded much hotter and “more modern” 🙂
They all sounded great. And all LOOKED the part too! Do the Burny and Greco have ebony fretboards? Looked like it in the video. I'm on the hunt for a MIJ Les Paul Custom with an ebony board. The Greco doesn't happen to still be for sale does it?
Hey man, I sold the Greco a year ago. That one had a Cortec board. It was my least favorite out of the guitars. The other two have remained in my collection. The 69' will be the last guitar to ever leave my collection.
they all sound good,fat and chunky,a few slightly different frequencies,tones,nothing radical,they all sound like lp to me.proving that the burny/greco arent better than the gibson,but are on par,and just as good,with the massive price difference,burny/greco for the win,tokai,bacchus,momose,combat,crews maniac also make lp copys as good or better than the real thing
Clean it’s the Gibson all the way. Both of the MIJ guitars are fine as-is clean but the Gibson was just a bit better.
When you added dirt, the Greco bridge was my favorite as it was just a bit punchier to my ears.
Overall the Burny was unique for all settings. No complaints.
For nostalgia, the Gibson is the desirable instrument but if it boiled down to economics, the Greco would win out for me as don’t often play clean.
Good demo. Very well done.
All of them sound so close you could not say which is which so this kinda prove the tone wood thing is pretty much corporate BS
Hands down the greco
New Sub & I really love that Burny!
Thank you my guy!
Great comparison! The cleaner clips make it obvious that the Gibby has somewhat less output, unless they were changed your '87 lighting bolt Burny have the (for some reason) less favored VH-3 or VH-4, which may or may not be slightly hotter (maybe it's just PU height?). The Burny is in all aspects incredibly close to the Gibson, much more than the Greco, part of that may or may not be that it has a maple cap like your Gibson,. The pre-1987 Burnys are closer to the late 50s models in this regard and ooze even more spanky/twangy Rock 'n Roll. :) OTOH, even though it was at the same price range as the Burny, a late 80s/early 90s (made between 2 Japanese economy crises) Greco EG-600 is actually a pretty low spec'd guitar in comparison and I'm quite surprised how much it shows in the PUs sounding less harmonic and spanky, with the tone developing less Custom-like after the attack. I take it the question if that's a $20,000 difference between any of the clones was a rhetorical one. ;)
The sweet spot for Grecos is 79-84, I suspect it's possible its the same for Burnys as well.
@@ws6206 Very much so for the Burnys too, actually for most of the guitar industry in Japan back then. The economic tide turned the other way in the second half of the 80s and the insane competition in the more budget-oriented parts of the "replica war" (of which the Burnys are a good example) started petering out.
To me the Greco stands out with the richest overtones and a woody tone, while the Gibson sounded the mushiest
Interesting. To me the Burny and Gibson sound the spankiest, and the Greco sounds like it has the hottest pickups :) Thanks for the input!
Btw, the Greco is for sale in case you are looking to get a new MIJ Les Paul :)
I thought it would be very close, my ears tell me the Burny killed it in first place. The Greco came a very close second. The Gibson last. The Gibson is good, but not as good as the others. Just because it is vintage and has an expensive brand name does not always mean it is the best. I have been luck to play 3 vintage Fender strats. My Custom Shop strat and my 1985 MIJ strat are way better than the 61/63/64 originals I tested, and way cheaper.
What year is the Greco?
Am not entirely sure. I don't have it anymore. It was either a very late 80s one, or an early 90s one. It was more than likely made in Korea, and with a Cortec board
@@AmnellAndreas Thanks for your reply. I'm doing some research for a possible purchase.
@@qua7771 If there is anything I can help with, let me know!
Burny rules
Pull the neck pickup out of the Burny and Greco, love to see the neck heal gap, every 70' and 80's i've owned was the same. Poor craftsman ship from mass production. Momose, Combat, Navigator and Aircraft are some high end MIJ. But you paid $$$ for them too..
I’ve got a Navigator from the 1980 :)
The Gibson sounds best to my ears. But it's really all about pickups. Burnys are not renowned for having great pickups and that guitar would benefit (to my tastes anyway) with a swap to a clearer humbucker. Gibson pickups from just a few years later were also pretty dull.
The Burny VH1 pickups are actually held in quite high regard. I do agree that the pickups do matter (and patent sticker T tops are great pickups), but I do think the Burny sounded close to the 69’ when I did this test. I do also want to point out that pots and caps play a big part in the sound if you ask me :) the newer Burny’s that are made in China are probably not that fun to play or listen too, but these older Japanese ones from the late 70s to early 90s are really good 🤘🏻
No criticism of the guitars. They're fantastic. But I hear a pretty big difference with the pickups with very little difference with the Greco. I agree pot and cap values can make a difference, but I don't agree that the Burny pickups sounded close.@@AmnellAndreas
Greco surprised me. But I love my Burny
greco is very sharpnes sound!! and old tast. burney is long sasteen than gibson's 1969.
japaneas vintage is great !!🚕
I’m the end the all sound the fkng same.
Not a Gibson or Epiphone it's not a Authentic Les Paul or Sg it's that plain and simple
It's too bad that the Japanese built guitars that often surpass a lot of the guitars coming out of the Gibson and Epiphone factories nowadays. No offense, but personally I don't care about brand - I care about quality 🙂
@@AmnellAndreas hate to piss on your parade the whole Japanese thing is straight up bs its highly unlikely that Scott Lewis over at Epiphone and this new guy with Gibson are putting out garbage
Bigsby spoils the sound
greco surprisingly sounded awful
Greco for the win inho😊
Mojo, special, unique, has that thing, magic are all just excuses for selling guitars at exuberant extortionate prices, don’t get me wrong I own some old(er) instruments and ones that haven’t been played, but tone is what you dial in on your amp and pups can be specified to order, necks can be shaved to your suit, the rest of the guitar is because of its aesthetics we prefer.
Don’t buy the Gibson.. the other two are superior in every way just not costs…. That’s my two rupees on it.
I probably wouldn't say the other two are superior to the 69' in any way. But they are both great guitars. But some guitars are more "special" (play better, resonate better, etc) than others. The Greco was the least special one for me and that's why I sold it. It just didn't feel good in my hands and lacked acoustic resonance that the Burny and Gibson has. And that is usually individual to each guitar. You can find a 200 dollar Squier that will resonate and play better than a 5000 dollar Fender Custom Shop for example :)
@@AmnellAndreas
You’re right about $200 could be better than a $5k guitar, which sometimes is where the custom shop guitars and many of the Gibsons LPs were poor when leaving the factory.
The MIJ Strats we’re always superior to US versions and back in the late 90s to mid 00s the MIM were even better than the US ones aswell, it definitely makes you think.
For Gibson money I’d purchase a Heritage H150 (which I did) and you’ll be happy you did….