Agile AL-2000 Blue Flame Lefty

This is an udate to the review I did earlier (please see below). I'm just going to address 2 or 3 things in this review: the strings, the nut, and the pickup height. Rondo music's web site says that D'Addario strings are installed at the factory. I'm not so sure about this now. The nut is a black rubbery substance and in retrospect is a problem. Last time I rated this section a 10, now I'll give it a 9 (I'd give it a 9.5 if I could).

After playing the guitar for 2 additional months I thought that the sound was kind of "dull" so I decided to replace the strings and while the strings were of I'd replace the nut. The D'Addario strings I'm familiar with are color coded. The original strings on this guitar were not which makes me suspect that they weren't D'Addario strings. I replaced the nut with a left-handed GraphTech Tusq nut for a Gibson guitar which took a little modification to work on the Agile. I put on D'Adderio .010 - .014 Bright regular light gauge strings. Wow! What a difference the new nut and actual D'Addario strings made. The improvement in the sound and sustain blew me away.

I recently bought a book on the care and maintenance of Gibson and Epiphone Les Paul Guitars. This is an incredible book. After reading the section on pickup height I realized that the pickups were way too low and I raised them to Gibson specifications and got another quantum leap of sound improvement.

With just the replacement of the nut and strings, and some adjustment of the pickups this guitar sounds amazing!

I initially said I didn't like the appearance of the black nut but I didn't realize that it was dampening the sound so much. The creme colored nut looks much better and since I got a nut precut for a Gibson, it gives the same string spacing as a Gibson which is better than the original Agile nut's spacing. I also didn't pick up on the fact that the pickups were way too low so I'll give this a 9 now too.

As before.

As before.

I truly believe this is the best Guitar for the money that's available today. There are a lot of more expensive guitars that are not as well made and a lot of cheap ones that are crap. If you buy one of these guitars you'll have to do a set-up, change the nut, replace the strings, and likely have to adjust the humbucker height. If you can't do it yourself it shouldn't cost that much to have a local guitar shop do it for you. You've still gotten an incredible deal.

This is a left handed Les Paul clone made in Korea in 2009. It has a solid mahogany body with laminated flame maple top, 2 wax potted passive ceramic humbucker pickups, cream colored body and neck binding, cream colored pick guard and pickup rings, set maple neck with rosewood fretboard and trapezodial pearloid inlays, 22 jumbo frets, and chrome Grover tuners. There are 2 amber volume and 2 amber tone control knobs, a 3-way selector switch, and chrome stop-bar tailpiece and tune-o-matic bridge. The finish is a transparent blue burst. The guitar came from the factory with D'Addario strings. This did not come with any accessories.

I play rock music mainly but also play some jazz and country. The guitar sound like a Les Paul guitar should. It has great sustain and produces a good range of sounds from full/rich to bright sound. I have a left handed Dillion DL600 gold top Les Paul clone (now nearly a $1000 guitar) and the sound is similar. Sounds great with distortion or clean. The humbucking pickups are nice and quiet. Since this is a "cheap" knock-off guitar I thought I might have to replace the pickups, switches, etc. but I was gladly surprised that I didn't need to. I almost always replace the factory strings first thing but these D'Addario strings are nice and won't be replaced until they wear out.

I have always wanted a transparent blue guitar. Being left handed the potential selection of guitars is extremely limited. I ran across this guitar one day when I was doing a Google search for transparent blue colored left handed guitars. For $219 I thought I'd give it a try and if the guitar wasn't any good I wouldn't be out much. I was shocked when I took the guitar out of the box. This guitar is gorgeous. Every one who sees it says "Where did you get that gorgeous guitar?" The picture that Rondo Music has on its web site doesn't do the guitar justice. The blue is a much deeper, richer blue than is pictured on the web site. The flame maple pattern is also much nicer than on their pictures. The sides and back of the guitar are a darker, more aqua color than the front. There is one small spot about the size of a pencil eraser on the side where the darker finish is thin and the color is closer to that of the front, otherwise the finish is perfect. There are no other flaws and no scratches. The binding is perfect. The chrome is perfect. Some people complain about the amber control knobs on Agile 2000's but I like them just fine. The nut is black. I do think the guitar would look better with a cream or bone colored nut but that's a small complaint. The pearloid inlays are not a nice as the ones on my Gibson SG but they are close and they are perfectly installed.

Out of the box the guitar was playable but the action was too high for me and the intonation was off. I adjusted the neck and bridge a little and now its perfect. I you can't do it yourself you can take it somewhere and have a local expert do a set up. You've still saved a ton of money. So far the Grover tuners are working nicely, Ive had no problems keeping it in tune.

This guitar seems well made and durable. It is becoming my favorite guitar and my Dillion Les Paul gold-top and Gibson SG are going to collect some dust. It seems like it would be dependable and I would gig with it but would always take a back up in case of an unexpected problem or broken string. I think most guitarists do that anyway.

Haven't needed them. Kurt at Rondo Music was quick to answer emails when I was considering purchasing the guitar.

I've been playing for 42 years. For left-handed guitarists the selection of guitars is very limited. The Agile AL 2000 is a great product for an incredibly low price. Is it as good as a Gibson Les Paul? No. My local guitar shop has Gibson Les Pauls ranging in price from around $2000 up to almost $10000. Lets see, you could buy from 9 to 45 Agile AL 2000s for the same price. I don't see how you can beat the deal. The Agile AL 2000 is very close in quality to my Dillion DL600 gold top which now costs almost $1000 for a lefty. You could get 4 Agiles for that price.

If this were lost or stolen I'd replace it with another one in a heart beat.