Godin Radiator

I don't know when it was made. Mine is blue with a white counter top covering the front of the body. It looks like a counter in a diner circa 1955. As mentioned, it has kinda crummy tuners, but once it stabilizes in a room it stays in tune pretty well. I use a Boss strobe tuner and check it pretty often.

I really like the neck and fretboard. It is a fast player with a comfortable feel to it. The cutaway is deep, but the top of the upper bout is high into the fretboard so the highest notes are a little hard to reach in spite of the cutaway.

No pickup switch... But that is part of the persona of this strange guitar. The pots are noisy, and could use an upgrade.

Intonation control is easy with the individual bridge pieces, and the body resonance is very pronounced and has good tone. The paint is as good as any guitar in the same price range, and the fret finish is superior to most guitars even at five times the price. (It is a shame that you cannot find a Tele with good fret finish until you hit the $1600 price range!)

IT IS LIGHT!!! I picked it up from a guitar stand and it just sorta flew up... I could not believe it. I have shoulder problems and like to play a light instrument. This is great for me.

The pickups sound, hmmmm, very good, but different than you might expect. I was comparing Teles, Strats, G&Ls, and then came upon this little guy. I played it through a few amps: Fuchs, Matchless, THD, and then the little Traynor YCV20. It sounds great, just great. The tone is sort of liquidy (is that a word?)

A few reviewers said they thought the sustain was lacking, but I find it adequate for my style, which is pretty vanilla clean. I did get a compressor pedal though, and it is quite a nice combination. I have had inquiries when playing as to what the heck it is, not only because it looks really different, but because it sounds different. I guess you would just need to hear it.

I bought it used and the action was just fine. Fit and finish are better than you should expect from the $300 price range...

I play it live. It travels in a Gator Soft/hard case. You know, one of those that has a molded inner bed and a canvas outer shell. I am careful not to bang the thing around. The tuners could be fragile as near as I can tell.

I have not had any dealings with Godin.

I have been playing for over 30 years and shopping for my next electric for about 20... My other electric is an old Ovation Viper that I bought new around 1974. This is shorter and lighter and I love the tone of it. I play it through a Traynor YCV20 and have used it with a Fender Princeton and a MusicMan HD110. It sounds really fine on any reasonably good amp.

If it were lost or stolen I might buy another, but I would shop around. I am pretty picky about what I pay for, and when I bought this it was because it surpassed the tone and playability of a great inventory of guitars that cost three to five times as much.

So, it is light, sounds really nice in a unique way, plays better than most other guitars in the price range, has much better fret finish than anything costing much more, and I had the money that day to buy it...

I might put on the set of Grovers that I have in a drawer to upgrade the tuners, and I would like a switch and better pots in the electrics. ...Just don't know when I would get around to it, though.

Still thinking about a Tele and sooner or later I'll run into one that I like that I can afford. Until then, this is my go to guitar.

A fun unusual little girl with unique tone and whys to tweak it via the volume controls. Physical appearance is flashy and an eye catcher. It's size and light weight make it a good choice to be a chick guitar.

Love the unique sounds you get from the pickups and the combo of volume and tone controls. Not everyone's cup of tea but fun as a secondary mess around guitar. Have an American Tele for actual gigs but this great to practice on because it's light and resonate for playing unplugged.

Great neck, setup and physical appearence. Unlike other posters I have had major problems with keeping it in tune. Tune it up, play one song and it's out. I think there are two problems. One, the string tree hangs up the strings and two, the tuning pegs are way to sensitive. Remove the string tree and switching the strings to 10's is a must but still left with the cheap tuning peg problem. Upgrading these should solve that problem.

Guitar seems very sturdy for such a light guitar and should be fine if you don't go Townsend on it.

No Opinion

Over all worthy guitar if tuning problems solved.

This is a strange little guitar with a semi hollow body design (tone chamers) and two single coil pickups. Not the most verstile guitar in the world but not too excentric either.

The pickups have a p90-ish feel to them, thick and glass-like. It??s a very resonant guitar that actually is quite loud unplugged. It shines when it comes to clean jazzy sounds and handles it self quite well with large amounts of distortion as well.

I do miss a pickup switch. It??s great to be able to blend the signal from the two pickups but in a live situation it can be a bit fiddly.

Build quality is ok. Not nearly as bad as some of the korean/indonesian/chineese guitars that are currently flooding the market. No problems adjusting it for low action. Neck??s nice and thin.

The tuners feels a bit iffy. I havent had any problems with them getting out of tune but I??m a bit worried they??ll break. Easy fix though if one was so enclined. Otherwise it feels solid.

If I were to by one guitar for every occation this wouldn??t be it but it??s a cool guitar and great value for money.

I'm not buying into the "parts made in Canada/assembled in the US/hand finished" idea that's abounding here. It's pretty much advertising speak. I'm sure some parts were made in Canada, I'm sure it was probably screwed together by unskilled, low-paid US workers like "classic" 50's Fenders and hand finished just means that a human took some part in the process but over all it screams Far East/Asian guitar. It's so ugly it's beautiful and as such is the best new-retro guitar you will see.

I never took it apart but I think there's a couple of ceramic pickups and the pickup covers takes the brashness off them - a bit. The two volume controls is a good idea if you have the time to set a balance because you can get a load of good sounds, but live - I don't think so. Replace one of the volumes with a large Gibson type switch and an easy rewire if you need to change pickups mid-song. Low-noise? It's all subjective but it doesn't sound any less buzzy than any other cheapish single-coil geetar.

The neck is generic Asian. Semi-matt finish which is always nice but the action is nothing great. Well put together neck joint and it does have those great fugly looks with a bit of a Rickie vibe.

Nothing has broken and the tuners work like all non-cheapo tuners so long as you've learned how to fit strings properly.

Dunno.

It's a 6. Recommended if you were thinking of buying a Tele copy/like shorter scales/want to look different and can find one with a lowish action.

Rock Maple neck
Rosewood Fingerboard
12" fingerboard radius
24 3/4" Scale
1 11/16" nut width
Chambered Silver Leaf Maple body
Low-Noise, Godin-Design single-coil pickups
Volume, Volume, Tone
Color: Black Body, White Onyx (Mother of bowling ball) front plate

This little guitar kicks ***!!

Playing funky, rockin' blues with alot of slide work.

Use it through US made V-Series amps (Crate/Ampeg), the black ones, not the GC 'Palominos'.

Have V8 (5 watt, class A, with Weber replacement 8 inch speaker), V15 (15 watts, class A, with Tone Tubby Ceramic 12 inch speaker), and a V30H + V212T (30 watt, class A head, with closed back 2X12 cabinet loaded with 2 Tone Tubby Ceramics).

No effect pedals.

This guitar has a great P-90 sound to it. No problem with P-90 noise though. Others have mentioned not liking the knob configuration but that's not the case with me. It has many different tonal combination's available and while I may not be able to get back to the exact setting/sound when I switch it around, I find easy enough to 'close'.

I find it has a great 'tele' twang when it's played really clean, backed off guitar volume and clean amp setting or it gets pretty dirty when cranked, very LP Jr sounding.

I love that it's light weight (after years of gigging with a '72 Deluxe LP...back breaker!) No real dislikes.

Got this guitar used and set it up myself. Heavier strings (11's or 12's, depending) and raised the action alittle for slide. Pickups have stayed right where they were when I bought it. I've opened it up when changing strings to see what was under the top plate...pretty simple, but effective, design.

No flaws that I have noticed.

Have used it a few times live now and it hasn't failed me yet. Always have a back up though. Hardware seems solid enough. Finish is OK...not something I worry about. The whole top is a pick guard so it should last. Seems very dependable.

Haven't tried.

Been playing 20+ years. Gigged high and low, dives to concerts.

Have owned alot of high end guitars...Gibson LP's (many), 335's (many), still own a CS NR Firebird (my number 1), Fender 62 RI Tele.

I've taken a real liking to this guitar for the reasons mentioned...light weight, solid tone, inexpensive (so not as worried about losing it/being stolen). I'd get another one if it ever were stolen. Bought this from a friend out of the blue...didn't know much about it but liked the look of it right away.

There's 67 previous reviews so you already know. I am not fond of the "blending volumes" between the bridge and neck pickups, but you can get a variety of sounds out of it with a bit of fiddling. The knobs aren't numbered tbough so it is hard to do on the fly. Impossible, in fact. I'd rather have a toggle switch. The previous owner pulled the occasionally-iffy stock pickups (according to the reviews here) and put some Duncan minibuckers into this guitar, which is helpful to a fan and player of noisy-type music like me. The rest of the guitar you've already read about - maple neck, toilet seat massive pickguard, ugly looks - but ugly in a real cool sort of retro way. This ain't an SG/LP StratoTele and sticks out like the proverbial sore thumb. I like it. Chicks dig it. ;-)

I have had this guitar for like three years but with 60 other guitars in the arsenal I hadn't rotated it into frontline use until recently, when I started wanting to use a cheaper throw-it-in-the-car-and-go-to-practice guitar, so I pulled this off the wall. I can't speak to the stock pickups, but with the Duncans in there this thing screams. Tonight I was playing it through a 5150 and it was screaming, very crunchy. Again, I wouldn't expect this out of the stock pickups, and a lot of that is the amp. But whatever it is - sounds good to me.

I got it used so I dunno about the factory setup. Some people bust on the pearloid tuning pegs, this guitar only altered tune slightly through two hours of my solidly beating on it. It holds tune. No complaints, and my tuning pegs have yet to fall apart. The knobs have retained their pearloid inserts. The volume pot does have the annoying roll-on/off over a tiny fraction of the rotation. In other words, starting at "off," roll it on and pretty much nothing happens for a bit, then suddenly it is "full on." This makes it very hard to play with the volume backed off a bit to get a clean sound, or cranking the volume up during a song for lead work. The pickup is basically "on" or "off" with little room in between. The action is very nice. I play with 10-48s or thereabouts and this guitar seems to like the setup.

I haven't broken it yet, and I am rather hard on guitars. Everything seems pretty solid so far. I of course would still take a backup as I break strings with some regularity. Haven't broken one on this guitar yet, though, which is a good sign. In about 10 days we'll be playing in Vegas at a strange bar where I don't know anyone except I know it's a tough place with a lot of drunks. The Les Paul is staying home and likely this Godin is getting the call. Because if it gets stolen or broken I simply will be very angry rather than absolutely flipping out.

I dunno, never talked to them.

I have been playing for damned close to 30 years now and currently own three Les Pauls, a pair of SGs, a Tele, three Strats and a whole bunch of other stuff I can't even list. I wouldn't hesitate to grab this off the wall heading to a show as it will hang with the big boys. Kind of wish it had the pickup switch but when playing The Punk Rock basically I have the bridge pickup full-on and that's it. I don't think I would buy a stock one, but when this one came up with the Duncans installed and at the right price, I had to do it. Kitschy cheesy look but I like it.

(Scroll down to the other reviews (or in Godin's website) for the stock setup.)

I have 2 radiators:

Radiator 1: White pearloid pickguard on a white body. Maple fingerboard, stock setup.

Radiator 2: White pearloid pickguard on a black body. Rosewood fingerboard, modded: Seymour Duncan SH11s on bridge and neck, 3-way toggle, tone knob now with a coil tap switch.

The neck is absolutely amazing. 12" radius with a D(?) shaped neck that is conducive to fast playing, but not too thin to strain your hands (I play thumb-over).

The pickguard top means you can customize it all you want. Stick in all sorts of switches without boring holes in the wood. Then if you want to revert back to the original setup, just buy a blank pearloid pickup which is readily available online.

Lack of a pickup switch means you can't switch settings fast. I'd also prefer a kill switch ala-Dano.

Difficult to reach the upper frets, since this is a single cutaway. So I really don't see much value in making the number of frets 24.

Pearloid tuning knobs are a bitch to find a replacement for, especially in my part of the world.

Electronics are not very accessible (you have a lot of screws to unscrew and you have to take the strings off) which is bad for me since I like to tinker with stuff.

The 2 radiators, despite having different pickups, have that similar warm, dark, semi-hollow sound. SH11s definitely compliment the stock sound by boosting the appropriate frequencies without being too middy. Both the stock and SH11 pickups reveal a muddy tone when distorted. They both also produce amazingly warm clean tones, comparable to Danelectros and similar guitars.

Bright tones a-la Tele are impossible to get.

The stock pickups, being single coil, have low outputs but with low noise. Kinda like P90s, but not quite.

Sustain leaves much to want, which is perfect for 50s-60s rock and some jazz, but a pain for heavy, compressed-guitars music.

I play blues-based heavy rock in a land of RGs, Les Pauls, Strats and Teles, so this produces a tone that's distinctly mine.

Bought both Radiators second-hand, so I have no idea of the factory setups.

The guitar seems to be able to withstand intensive gigging that doesn't include smashing it or bumping it into stuff. Which is probably also true for most other guitars out there.

Maple wood for the neck and body means that it's made of ultra-hard wood. Should have no worries about these breaking in half.

Hardware takes a long time to tarnish. Maintenance is the key I guess, since I apply WD40 on all hardware after every time I play it.

The pearloid tuning knobs easily break, though. Mine broke for no reason. It was just leaning by the wall and I heard a crack.

I've been e-mailing Godin for replacement tuners the past 6 months and no reply so far. You guys suck at this.

Been playing guitar since 1993. I have a Fender Standard Tele, an Epiphone Del Rey, and these 2 Radiators, and they were all chosen because they sound a particular way. I love the Radiator because of its distinct sound and playability. Its wonderful looks only came as a bonus.

My Radiator has a maple neck with rosewood fingerboard.
The unusual thing about the Radiator is its knob scheme,
with a separate volume control for each of the two single-coil
pickups, and a single shared tone control. This scheme allows
a huge number of sounds to be dialed in, but it's not always
easy to get back to a sound you liked. With this guitar it
pays to get really familiar with what the knobs can do, and
to make lots of adjustments on the fly.

I like clean and lower-gain sounds, and the Radiator
does very well here. It's quiet for a single-coil guitar.
The neck pickup can be a little boomy. I wasn't able to
solve this problem by adjusting the bass/treble height on
the pickup. But mixing in a bit of the bridge pickup solves
this problem.

You can definitely get a huge variety of sounds with this
guitar. The tone control is effective, but sometimes I
can't get things quite as bright as I'd like.

Somehow the balance between the strings doesn't seem just
right on my guitar, even after lots of messing with pickup
heights. On the other hand, I've found sounds on this
guitar that don't sound so special on their own that sound
great in the mix. It works for blues and pop -- and it's
warm enough for lots of jazz, but not dark-sounding.

I replace the factory "hybrid" 9-46 string set with a standard
10-46 string set and this improved the sound of the high E-G
strings.

I bought my Radiator used, and it needed some setup work.
The hardware all seems fine -- Godin seems good at producing
guitars with no weak points, although the tuners don't seem
as precise as on my other guitars.

I love the neck on this guitar; it's super comfortable.

Once I replaced the 9-46 string set with a 10-46 set the
truss rod needed to be tightened (even though I like a
bit of neck relief). In its current position it's a little
hard to adjust, which makes me nervous. I don't see how
I could string this particular Radiator with 11's or 12's.

My Radiator seems solid, but I don't gig with it. I may change
the tuners some day.

I've emailed Godin on two or three occasions, and each
time they've answered within about a day.

This is a comfortable, versatile guitar that is fun to
play. With any guitar there's an issue of how it sounds
on its own versus how it sounds in the mix. So far I
like the sound of this guitar on its own but really like
it in the mix. I'm going to try recording with it more.

I've been playing for 30 years and own about a dozen guitars.
At the moment, my favorite single coil in the bunch is a
Peavey Reactor. That guitar seems to always sound in tune,
and can cover nice jazz sounds to classic tele sounds.
In comparison, the Radiator is probably more versatile, but is
more finicky about tuning and, for me, able to not hit
warm jazz sounds as well.

I really enjoy playing my Radiator but am not sure if I'd
replace it if stolen. As I mentioned, I'll see how it works
for recording.

I paid around $200 on eBay for my Radiator and consider them
a very good value.

It's a basic guitar. No more

Pickups have weak output on high strings(they sound bright thou) , but good enough when using a high gain amp, an overdrive or distorsion box. I use boss pedals for this (blues overdrive or ds1). Almost noiseless pickups but they hum madly within sight of monitors or fluorescent lights. The tone pot is almost useless goes from not bright enough to much too bassy. The guitar is made hallow so it will feedback at anything above bedroom levels, I do not consider this guitar to be gigging ready.

Fit and finish is nice, the string tree is improperly aligned by 1/16 of an inch towards the bass side, wich makes the third string it one of the screws, if buying one watch for this.

I do not consider this guitar to be gigging ready. Feed back was a problem on stage and,I broke one tuning peg during a normal string change, I had no backup. Keep earing strange crackling from neck joint everytime I tune up.

I have personaly dealt directly with Godin, they are unhelpful, they support what they sell, only if you pay for the repairs. Their is no warranty, guarantee or any customer protection. I am very disapointed.

I have been playing for 30 years. I had this guitar since it was released (1999). My recommandation to new players and old alike, would be to stick with long time builders (Fender and Gibson, and sub-companies), that have good warranties, helpful personnel, and have easy to obtain and standard parts. This is the opposite with all Godin products. Stear clear of this guitar, or be prepared to get disatisfied in the near futur.

Less than basic stuff, no toggle switch, only one tone control, cheap no-name non locking tuners, bar type string tree, non standard bridge.

Bridge pickup sounds very good but has very low output even for a single coil. Neck sounds also very good but is adjusted very low to have same output has the neck pickup.
Poor score for low output.

Action great set low just like I like it. Fit is very good for a low priced guitar. The imitation pearloid was protected with a vinyle (or Poly-something) scratch guard that did not come off cleanly, I had to remove the pickguard to clean off the raggies. Tuners and string tree look pretty flimsy.

This is where this thing rates poorly, the tuning knobs keep breaking, I will have to find a permanent fix for this problem (metal knobs). The string tree pulled out twice when the tuners let go, and yes I still use the recommended string gage for this guitar. Buzzing from bridge (unknown cause). Yet I take great care of my guitars, and the last time a tuner knob broke, the guitar had been in its case for a year, strings slacked off. The neck the body joint looks weak, no metal pressure plate. Thin neck but seams well trussed.

Forget custumer support it is basicaly non existent. You are left to deal with the store you bought it from, mine guitar is out of warranty, and the hourly charge is too high for my budget. So I'm stuck with this dud.

If stolen I wouldn't be surprised that the thief would bring it back to me, to get it rapaired yet again. Please use a backup with this thing, it is unreliable, I personnly only take it out of it's case to tune it when I can, and practice some riffs in my bed room. I no longer gig with it, I'm afraid this thing will break.