Members onelife Posted May 31, 2011 Members Share Posted May 31, 2011 A friend of mine died recently and left his widow with a few guitars. She has asked me to help her sell or otherwise deal with them. One guitar we are looking at is a high quality Made in China no-name Les Paul copy. It is very well constructed with a solid maple cap and a nice flame maple veneer. It has the typical Pacific Rim pitched headstock style neck and the overall construction seems very good. I'm not very familiar with the Epiphones but I suspect this would be of similar quality to a high end one. (Do the Epis have a solid maple cap?). The hardware is typical Pacific Rim and actually seems to be of good quality. It has the little mini pots in an unshielded cavity with no mounting plate and the pickups are questionable. It has a beautiful sunburst finish and really looks like an old '59 (it even has the right headstock shape ant two screw truss rod cover). Can anyone give me any idea what something like this may be worth? She is thinking of putting it on eBay and wants to know what would be reasonable. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Cpt Albatross Posted May 31, 2011 Members Share Posted May 31, 2011 Well, based off your description, not much. You might be able to get a few hundred out of it (400 at most). I say this because of a couple aspects of your description. It was made in china under a unrecognisable name. Sadly, in the guitar world, instruments from china tend to get a bad rap, due to the mass production manufactoring process, which tends to yeild flaws in the guitar. The fact that it's not sheilded in the control cavity maybe a sign off this, but I've seen gibsons (like katana's V) that have been unsheilded as well. The fact tht it's a chinese clone, however, is what will ding you the most, as most clones from this region were mad to look like the originals, but not perform. Like I said, if your looking for around $300 to $400, you'll probably be okay, but I wouldn't expect anymore. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members harold heckuba Posted May 31, 2011 Members Share Posted May 31, 2011 My guess would be more around $150-200, about like a used Agile. Epiphones themselves dont always reach even $300, so I doubt a no name would bring as much. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members DaleH Posted May 31, 2011 Members Share Posted May 31, 2011 No name makes for a pretty rough sell. What is in it for pickups? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members soundcreation Posted May 31, 2011 Members Share Posted May 31, 2011 what's the name on the headstock? If it says "Gibsun"...it's basically worthless. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Edge11 Posted May 31, 2011 Members Share Posted May 31, 2011 A friend of mine died recently and left his widow with a few guitars. She has asked me to help her sell or otherwise deal with them. One guitar we are looking at is a high quality Made in China no-name Les Paul copy. It is very well constructed with a solid maple cap and a nice flame maple veneer. It has the typical Pacific Rim pitched headstock style neck and the overall construction seems very good.I'm not very familiar with the Epiphones but I suspect this would be of similar quality to a high end one. (Do the Epis have a solid maple cap?).The hardware is typical Pacific Rim and actually seems to be of good quality. It has the little mini pots in an unshielded cavity with no mounting plate and the pickups are questionable.It has a beautiful sunburst finish and really looks like an old '59 (it even has the right headstock shape ant two screw truss rod cover). Can anyone give me any idea what something like this may be worth? She is thinking of putting it on eBay and wants to know what would be reasonable. Is it a kit he assembled? pics? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members zenbu Posted May 31, 2011 Members Share Posted May 31, 2011 "pacific rim" covers a lot of ground...some are extremely high end MIJs...some are low end models priced that way for a reason. I do not yet own any Chinese guitars, see lots locally but I`m in Japan and personally prefer the high end MIJs. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members frankthomson Posted May 31, 2011 Members Share Posted May 31, 2011 If it says "Gibsun"...it's basically worthless. he said NO NAMEsoooooooooooooooooooo.............$50 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members vintage clubber Posted May 31, 2011 Members Share Posted May 31, 2011 pics... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Yer Blues Posted May 31, 2011 Members Share Posted May 31, 2011 I haven't heard of no-name. I've heard of Agile, Edwards, Tokai, etc... but no-name??! Post pics. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members GCDEF Posted May 31, 2011 Members Share Posted May 31, 2011 Yeah, without a name and a veneer cap, pretty close to nothing. For what shipping would cost, ebay may not even be worth it. Try CraigsList first. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members BryanMichael Posted May 31, 2011 Members Share Posted May 31, 2011 If it is as nice as you say it is- $200 (max) seems to be the cutoff point at which people will take a chance on something like this. With lots of good pictures, and a quick video or audio demo to assure people you aren't "hiding anything" I bet it would sell very quickly for $200. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members onelife Posted June 1, 2011 Author Members Share Posted June 1, 2011 Thanks for the replies. I would have thought it would be worth more because it is quite a nice guitar - I'll post pics when I get back home in a few days. I do, however, realize that price is determined not by how nice the Guitar is but how much someone would be willing to pay. That is why I posted here. The headstock is Gibson shape (smaller, like the old ones) but with no name or any other markings on it. By 'Pacific Rim' I was referring to the way the end of the neck it cut at an angle and a second piece of wood is glued on to create the headstock pitch. It makes it look like a generic model of guitar that can have a different headstock attached depending on the customer order. There is a proper maple cap on the mahogany but the nice flame is a veneer on top of that. I'm not sure what the pickups are. I will compare it to my other humbuker guitars (including a Les Paul Studio) but, even though it has a nice solid ring to it without being plugged in, I'm not too optimistic about the pickups. My friend was more of a collector than a player and he was concerned about what the guitars looked like. I used to tease him about it because my stripped down LP Studio with ebony fingerboard sounded just as good as his high priced LP Custom Koa top and I didn't worry about scratching mine. In fact, if someone one was going to rate tops from 1 to 10 mine would be a zero. There are some very nice guitars in his collection. Feel free to PM me if interested. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Seano Porno Posted June 1, 2011 Members Share Posted June 1, 2011 Hmm...the "pacific rim" neck you describe is a scarf joint. I understand that to be just another method of creating the headstock angle, which isn't nessicarily reserved for a generic neck which can have any shape headstock put on it. What happens with carving the headstock out of one piece of wood is that you slice through the grain at whatever angle your headstock pitches at, usually starting at the back of the nut. Add into this the removal of yet more wood there for the truss rod cavity, you're left with a weak spot. This is made worse when using a shorter grained wood like mahogany. Gibsons are notorious for headstock breaks (I'm upto 5 breaks with my Gibsons so far ) because of this. A scarf joint allows you to create your headstock pitch as well as letting you cut along the grain where the weakest pont in the neck lies. To be honest, I personally think that scaft jointed headstock are a much more stable option. Alas...they don't look as pretty as a single piece neck. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members guitarcapo Posted June 1, 2011 Members Share Posted June 1, 2011 That's one of those guitars that's probably more valuable than it's worth. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members onelife Posted June 3, 2011 Author Members Share Posted June 3, 2011 Hmm...the "pacific rim" neck you describe is a scarf joint. I understand that to be just another method of creating the headstock angle, which isn't nessicarily reserved for a generic neck which can have any shape headstock put on it. What happens with carving the headstock out of one piece of wood is that you slice through the grain at whatever angle your headstock pitches at, usually starting at the back of the nut. Add into this the removal of yet more wood there for the truss rod cavity, you're left with a weak spot. This is made worse when using a shorter grained wood like mahogany. Gibsons are notorious for headstock breaks (I'm upto 5 breaks with my Gibsons so far ) because of this. A scarf joint allows you to create your headstock pitch as well as letting you cut along the grain where the weakest pont in the neck lies. To be honest, I personally think that scaft jointed headstock are a much more stable option. Alas...they don't look as pretty as a single piece neck. Thanks for the info. I would agree that the scarf joint looks to be much more solid. I referred to it as a "typical pacific rim" neck because that is where I see it the most. I've also had quite a bit of experience with broken Gibson headstocks. My current Number One is a Les Paul studio that had the finish completely removed during the headstock repair. It's a great guitar and I don't think I would have had the opportunity to get it had it not been broken. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Brewski Posted June 3, 2011 Members Share Posted June 3, 2011 If its really nice and looks very Gibson-ish you can buy a Gibson replacement logo and put it on the neck and repaint it and sell it for $1200.00 Of course you;d be doing a very bad thing! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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