Japanese Guitars: New Guitar: 32-year old Greco EG59-85

Early Mint Collection "Super Real" headstock

Special setting?

Before

After

Another Mint Collection arrived today from Japan. Like the first Mint Collection I owned, it is the mid-range EG59-85 model. From Yahoo Auction photos it was hard to tell the condition of this 32 year old guitar but after some clean up and rearranging of parts (see the original pickups and rings on the right!)it looks close to new.

The board was extremely dry so some lemon oil and elbow grease had things looking much better.

The MC Grecos I have had from this time have ranged in weight from 3.7 kg to 4.55 kg. This one is an easy to handle 4.2 kg. The seam on the 2-piece back is hard to find but it is there if you look closely.

I think that the inlays they used on the early 1982 Les Paul Standard copies look much better than the previous acrylic ones (non-MOP models) used from 1980-1981. The colour is nicer and does a better job of mimicking the inlays on the the original bursts.

The EG59-85 has jumbo frets and nice fret edge binding that is faithful to the way it was done on some of the original bursts.

Fret-edge binding detail

The tuner buttons are also a nice touch with the marbled look which Gibson only recently introduced on their historic models.

I like the Double Trick pickups a lot. They are a bit hotter than DRY1982s from my experience but once they are adjusted properly (to my taste anyway)they remind me of a nice Alnico 2 pickup with good double tones. Perhaps a good comparison is Classic 57s. Hard to say because pickups can be very subjective. In any case, they have their own thing going on and I find they are more complex than the ceramic Screamin1982s. Use that tone knob on the bridge though as the bridge has some high end bite to it. The neck is nice and buttery like Duane's tone on those old Allman Brother's albums.