Mint Collection Greco special SGs

When checking email for auction alerts I had a Greco SG notice that was already an hour old.

One click on the link, and right away I am staring at a Greco odd-ball SG, the same one that I remember seeing years ago on the legendary Udonitron's Flickr site (pics below from the talented Udonitron). With a fair purchase price, I remembered enough to read the description before hitting the magic button. "The Greco logo looks similar to a Gibson - don't purchase if that bothers you." stood out but only as something I've never seen before. The pictures look decent enough so click, click, click and off the market it did come.

Triple mini-humbuckers. From https://www.flickr.com/photos/bobenis/

1989 serial From https://www.flickr.com/photos/bobenis/

Someone from the great FB Greco group posted a video link to another example from 1989. There is some good playing here to demo the pickups.





Certainly there was another 3-pickup SG that came out around the same time, also with gold hardware but with P-90s, dot inlays, and metal tuning pegs like on a junior.  One one of the auction sites, a proper model name: Greco SS-85S model for Ranmaru from "Street Sliders."
A quick search and we have actual footage of the man himself with the guitar.

I pulled these pictures from an old auction:

So that solves one Greco 3-pu model story, but I couldn't find anything for the SG model with mini-hums.  At least there is one more out there. There is one more SG that I had, but as is my bad habit with most of the rare guitars I get, I ended up selling it. Perhaps it was a custom order or a model made for an artist. I'm sure another one will show up someday.

GOLD Jerry! GOLD!

Happy New Year 2020!

Stoptails, P-90s and gold. Gold Jerry! Gold!! 

 
Ok, excuse that Seinfeld reference.

Here are a couple of made-in-Japan tone machines that meet that recipe. The non-reverse Burny Firebird is an early 90's FB-65 or FB-75 (I think they adjusted the price at some point and the Crews is a recent model from around 2017 in the LS-02 series.

The Burny pickups sound really good to me. I'm not sure what the middle position switch does but will have to look under the hood some time. 

These are a slightly different shade of gold. I'm not sure what is more accurate to vintage Gibson colors. 

Both guitars have decent intonation all things considered with the stop-tails but full chords past the 10th fret just sound a bit off with the imperfect intonation. These are great blues and rock guitars though for single lines, bends and vibrato to make the intonation not matter too much.

The Crews is a Terada product and as usual is flawless in build has a perfect nitro finish and nice inlay and fret work.

I guess the Burny is a Dynagakki build from the routing and rough year but have no confirmation of that.

Gold Jerry! Gold.