Jay Turser JT-136

Found this 2004 Jay Turser JT-136 archtop (ES175) copy and loved it from across the room. Actually, it was a bit garish looking, with the spat-like cream pick-guard and truss-rod cover but I knew it was going to work. I trusted that it was really based on the 175 because the owner of the shop said it was an asian Epiphone.

Sold w/o case, I special ordered one for a 175 and it fit perfectly. It's quite pretty with its roomy Florentine cutaway, thick cherry/sunburst finish and all the binding work (even around the f-holes). Most importantly, it's got the basic construction build that makes modifying this rig worth the trouble.

It looks great, is decently constructed and you're hardly paying anything for the electrics it doesn't have, assuming you don't mind paying over $400 for a basic, attractively built, well glued, thickly painted piece of wood w/ 22 medium frets and lots of cosmetic appointments.

I love this plywood archtop. I have no idea what KIND of wood it's made of. I've had it for 5 years now, testing a succession of circuits and functional styling tweaks.

The only thing I've kept original on this Turser is the painted piece of wood, the chrome plate for the output jack, the chrome bracket for the pick-guard, the pickup rings and the nut, which is going next when I make the 1st and 2nd strings 12s.

Installed Seymour Duncan Jazz and Custom Covers, each with 4 conductor wires in the appropriate places and rigged them through push-pull volume pots and a Gibson 3-way pick-up switch. Another thing I really like about the way this Turser is designed is the location of the 3-way??? it's right next to the pick-guard (which is my preference).

I built a Torres mid-range/master tone circuit in place of the two tone pots and finished it up with a 6-position varitone switch. So how does it sound? You can imagine the tonal range I have to work with, but hey, it's NOT a $3,000 guitar being played through a $2,000 amp. The point is, the Turser is cheap but well made enough to be worth hot-rodding the hell out of it.

Most often I'm happy cutting one or both coils, playing loud and clean with mild OCD overdrive, Keeley compression and Boss delay into a 12" ceramic Tone Tubby powered by a Crate V15 with Mullards driven by a Groove tube 12AT7. I like to range between fat articulated notes and achieve break-up by using my attack or volume pedl swells. Treble @6, mid+bass @ 0~1 w/ boost; not much reverb.

Then again, cranking up the gain w/o effects for distortion works fine too. But because I prefer a "mellower" tone (more bassy), but need a lot of headroom, I find the guitar really IS lacking in terms of richness in the lows. So yeah, that's where this hollow-body's weakness lies. Acoustically, the sound is damp, not dull, and the pickups are potted so I really don't have much to criticize in terms of feed-back. I control feedback by lowering the amp's bass and with the guitar's volume. (I LIKE certain kinds of feed-back a lot.)

Did I mention I love this guitar? Even so, out of the gate, this box wasn't that great.

I got it new at a divey little shop on the Panhandle in San Francisco (Panhandle Guitars). I paid $429 over a month's time and all I asked the owner to do was get the crackle out of the loose output jack. Nothing about this guitar's set-up was bad enough to worry about. It's strong suit is how nice it is to behold. Very precious, it is.

The fret ends are/were noticeable. There was a subtle resonance I finally traced to a cheap, snot-green A tuner (replaced with a set of nickel plated Tone Pros Kluson push-fit 16:1 tuners w/ luscious creamy colored keystone buttons). The wood bridge was replaced with a Gibson vintage-style Tune-O-matic fit with Graph Teck String-Saver saddles (which lessened the thinness coming through the metal bridge). The JT-136 isn't a jazz-box, so the wood bridge was only good for looks anyway, in my opinion.

The nut was good enough to work with when I went to 12s, but that cream truss rod cover was butt ugly. I made a new one out of a piece of blk/crm/blk and replaced the dilettante-ish cream pickguard too. YUCK! Of course, I HAD to get a 175-style tail-piece and found I had to position it off-center to keep the strings aligned with the neck. Big deal, the $30 trapeze coulda been off a little too. The little screw's head holding the pick-guard by the cutaway showed mild abuse. It's still on the guitar.

This thing looks great at any angle, but don't spoil it by looking too closely. It's not perfect, but there's nothing careless or shoddy about the finish either. I can't figure out how anyone can construct an instrument so well, ship it and get it into your hands for so little money!

I don't believe the bone stock Turser I bought would be very good for much but loud Rockabilly and certain kinds of Blues because the stock electrics (my pickups were stamped "Gibson") are so cheap. I wouldn't have been able to stand them for long. Good soldering, but low-end parts. I could bang on this (considering it IS an archtop) without trepidation.

I knew I wasn't going to settle for the standard circuitry anyway, so I wasn't ever concerned due to the fact that any electrical issues were going to be of my own making. Make no mistake, the issue wasn't overall reliability??? it was about tone. I wouldn't take a guitar out that I didn't think would make it through the night. It was plenty good for that.

It's made out of plywood, has a decent, solidly set neck, thick paint and is reasonably well constructed. I never play outside of the city limits. After I got some of those Dunlop strap-button discs I felt totally confident about the strap not falling off. This hollow-bodied lightweight rocks.

It's my guitar now. It came with a year warrantee, but I had it inside out 3 or 4 times in the first year. With the build quality being what it is, I didn't find out. I suspect the shop that sold it would spend no more than a couple hours addressing anything that might come up.

Jay Turser is a marketing/distribution firm. They don't make these well targeted, sharp looking, reasonably priced and functionally produced guitars. They do seem confident about their product. I remember calling their offices once, in New Jersey. I forget why. The person on the other end was a musician, but not a guitarist.

I've been playing a range of styles and techniques from Classical to Jazz to Bossa Nova to Prog and roots Rock using Vox and Fender flavored edgy+clean tones working through 40 years of study. This Turser is only the 3rd electric I've owned, one other being a early-70s SG I bought new for $400. I have a 1950 Gibson LG-1 with the ladder bracing (00 sized), a Japanese Classical, and a Spanish La??d (brilliant 12 string). If I lost it, I'd replace it with another hollow or semi-hollow guitar. Maybe a thinline tele or a Johnny A, hot-rodded to suit my fancy. This Turser has been a great "mule" to experiment with and to learn what works for me. I LOVE this thing.

The features have been covered sufficiently in previous reviews. I'm giving it a 10 because it's got what you might expect here. I got mine used and it's the natural finish version. I find it curious that if you look carefully, the features vary slightly in these reviews jackplate for example.

I bought this guitar because I wanted to learn to play some jazz and I needed the guitar to fit. After I put some flatwounds on it, it has a nice full sound when plugged in. I found some tuning instability but seems to be better now that I've changed to a slightly heavier guage of strings. I'm using D'Addario Chromes 11.
The guitar is nice and quiet. I had some crackling in the knobs, but worked itself out with some quick turning.
I'm playing clean.
I love the feel of this guitar in my arms. It's got a great playable neck and you can get way up to the high frets with no trouble. It's a nice comfortable instrument. I am primarily an acoustic guitar player. It is for this reason that I wanted to get a hollow thick body guitar. The SG my dad bought me for my 16th birthday is a fine guitar, but you can't cuddle up to it. I bought this guitar hoping that I'd get a nice acoustic sound out of it as well. This is not the case. If you're hoping for a jazz acoustic sound as well as an electric sound, get something else. It is certainly fine for quiet practice, but the tone unplugged is thin and quiet, this is why it gets the 7.

I got this one used on ebay. It was advertised as great condition with no dings or scratches. Well, it was nearly so. I think I've found two thin scratches on the sides and a small ding on the back of the lower bout. It really is nice.
I can't speak to how it came from the factory, but I do notice that the fret ends are a little sharp in places and the nut seems a little long on the top side. There is a little problem with the binding and the fret board where it joins the neck, lower side, in the cutaway. It's just not a clean join. The cruddy pick guard rattled and so I got rid of it since I plan to play mostly finger style. These don't effect playability as far as I'm concerned.The one thing that I am actually a little concerned about are the tuners. People have said that they are solid but I feel a little play in some of mine. One seems a little rough, possibly got banged a little bit. This is obviously not a new guitar, but just think that maybe the tuners aren't all that great. They work, stay in tune now a bit better with new strings but . . .
The 8 is because the guitar feels all around solid, but other stuff is budget. This sounds like a bunch of problems. I like this guitar and can't afford an expensive one. It plays nice and other stuff can be fixed.

Well, I don't generally take a back up when I play live, but then I don't use my guitar for anything more than making music on the stage. I've never played a floating bridge before and so I am concerned that I'll nock it out of place if I get a little inthusiastic.
The finish is THICK THICK THICK and I think that's part of what effects the acoustic sound. The pickup rings seem pretty flimsey and I have noticed that if you aren't careful, these guitars tend to get loose knobs.
I also have a loose tuner knob and am not quite sure how to fix that.
My thought here is this, it's a guitar, with proper care and occasional maintenance, it will do its job for a good long while. My 1980 SG has a loose jack, so nothings perfect.
It feels nice, plays in tune, and sounds good through an amp. It's all about the music that comes out of it isn't it anyway?

life time but probably not worth the shipping. I have actually exchanged emails and phone calls with the company when deciding which turser to get. They were nice and helpful. The guy I spoke to didn't sound quite as knowledgable in the technical area, but at least they didn't ignore me. They're in NY and speak English

I really am pleased with this guitar. My favorite thing is how it feels in my arms and in my hands. Obviously, that's not enough with a guitar, and it really does sound good when plugged in and I'm sure it'll sound better as I learn to play it better.
It feels like it will stand up to good use and any hardware and electronics can certainly be replaced.
My biggest disappointment about this guitar is that it does not have a nice acoustic voice . . . oh well, guess I'll just have to get another! :-)

Oh, the joys of a cheap archtop! This guitar is fabulous. A full-bodied, fully-hollow, well-constructed archtop for around $300, wow! Don???t get me wrong, this is no fine jazz guitar, even though retailers like to call it a ???jazz box.???, but if you want a fully hollow archtop for banging out some blues, this thing can???t be beat. It???s not even really a copy of a modern Gibson ES-175, which some retailers also like to call it. Sure, it???s got a single Florentine cutaway, two humbuckers, and parallelogram inlays like an ES-175. But, the JT has a wooden bridge whereas ES-175 has a tune-a-matic with metal saddles, and the JT???s body is a litte more elongated than the 175???s. And, to the JT???s advantage, the cutaway on the JT offers better access to the high frets than the 175; in fact, the high frets on the JT are probably more accessible than any other archtop, and even more so than most solidbodys (better than both my Tele and my ES-335 in that regard).

Sonically, the JT is a bit plinky. I???ve heard it said that the JT-136 is 80% of an ES-175 for 10% of the price. As much as I like my JT, I wouldn???t go that far. In some aspects of construction, the JT is 80% of the Gibson, maybe even its equal, but as far as acoustic sound goes, the JT???s probably somewhere between 50% and 60% of the Gibson, especially in the low end. Fortunately, though, we???re talking about an electric guitar here, so just add some good pickups and that???ll close that gap somewhat when you???re plugged in. I haven???t had a chance to compare an amplified JT side by side with an amplified ES-175, but I have done some recorded A/B???ing between the JT and a stock ???82 ES-335, and there are some instances where I prefer the (modified) JT.

The JT-136 is put together well, and is fantastically comfortable to hold and play. The construction of the body and neck, the binding, and the finish are top rate. If I didn???t play with such high action, the frets would???ve needed some attention initially, but that???s not unusual for a new guitar. The tuners work fine. From there, we do run into problems. The tailpiece is a piece of crap. It???s so crooked it pulled the strings way to one side (the treble side on my guitar, but I???m lefthanded so it could be that it pulls toward the bass strings on a right handed guitar). The toggle switch is cheap and vibrates badly enough to make a very audible buzz when playing acoustically. The stock pickups seem ok. I replaced mine with a Seymour Duncan 59 and a DiMarzio PAF, both set up with single-coil switching. I hardly played the JT amplified before replacing the pickups, but they seemed to sound allright when cranked. The volume pots didn???t have bypass caps, so it sounded pretty lifeless when turned down at all. As far as remedying the tailpiece problem goes, I got the guitar with the intention of installing a Hipshot Trilogy, which I did, so I didn???t have to mess with fixing the stock tailpiece.

If I change anything else about this guitar, it???ll be to add a stationary tune-a-matic bridge. The stock wooden bridge sits on top of the guitar, and since I play pretty hard sometimes, I knock it out of position every now and then. Consequently, I am hesitant to use it on a gig, despite how much I use it at home, which is a lot. Also, I think the metal of the tune-a-matic will help the guitar sustain. Being that it is a hollow body, it doesn???t have much sustain, but there???s loads of potential for controlled feedback.

Before I bought the guitar, I e-mailed the Jay Turser company once to ask about the JT-136's fretboard radius and nut width. I never heard back, so I'm dubious about how responsive they might be if I ever need help with the guitar.

I've been playing for 33 years and I have owned many guitars and amps. In acquiring this JT-136, I actually got rid of one of my favorite guitars that I've ever owned as part of the trade deal: a 1985 or '86 Tokai Breezysound (Tele copy). I play slide as much as anything, without a pick, so I like wide flat necks. The Tokai neck is very faithfull to a 60's Tele, so it was just too small and curved for me anymore. Every once in a while I miss it, but I have so much fun playing the JT, I get over it.

This is a custom guitar now. Hard to tell what it might have been like pure stock. But if you have one, try the GFS type Retrotron combinations. You'll be amazed. If you play finger style, set the intonation for ultralights and play with low action and light touch. It is amazing, but you have to get used to the light touch thing. It's not a rock guitar if you set it up light. It also won't work well with a flat pick if you set it up light. But for finger style jazz chord and lead playing, you can't beat it for the money. Wes Montgomery and Tony Matolla would have had fun with this thing.

Mine is a full custom version with input from my studio and Scott at Wilburncustomshop.com. Kluson tuners, roller chrome bridge on custom fitted oversize rosewood, Bigsby trem, D'Addario 9's, GFS Memphis Retrotron neck and GFS Nashville Retrotron bridge. Intonation reset for 24.6 inch scale. Outstanding as modified for light intonation jazz, blues and rockabilly but set up for finger style lead/chord player. Run through Behringer VAmpII preamp system, which means I can imitate any amp I want in studio and even through a PA system. Custom built for finger style jazz axe and it is easier to play than my L4.

No idea how it was set up from the factory. Scott had already refined it. He knows what he's doing. But, I have other JT guitars which came from the factory well set up for whatever strings they picked for it. It's a Chinese guitar, but make no mistake, they also know what they are doing.

It's well made and the refinements only made it better. I may put coil taps on both pickups just to widen the options. It's a solid ten given the custom adjustments.

In this price range you fix it yourself. If I pay $5 grand for a guitar I expect someone else to make it satisfy me. For a total of $500 in custom mods (including the guitar) who can complain? JT claims lifetime warrantee and they probably mean it. But I've never had a JT with enough of a problem I would bother them over.

Playing for over 30 years. Own Gibson, Fender, Martin, Ovation, you name it. This guitar was an experiment in customization for jazz finger style. It has a relatively small body for an archtop, but that makes it easier to hold and play than a conventional archtop. It's lighter in weight. But I like it. I play it for hours. Other than the coil taps, it has everything I could want in a jazz/blues guitar.

Not sure when it was made. I bought it off Ebay. Came with two humbuckers and a three way toggle switch, trapeze tailpiece, and single cutaway. Basically is a copy of the Gibson ES-175.

I bought this guitar to use during a musicians night for jazz so that I would not have to bring an expensive guitar to this gig. While this guitar does not sound bad it does not sound like wood resonating. The sound is thin and in an attempt to help the sound I removed the stock pickups and replaced them with Bill Lawrence L-450s. This did not help because the pickups simply amplify the sound of the guitar which again is not a woody fat tone. But I only paid $135 for the thing so you can only expect so much.

The guitar is truly beautiful to look at and the action is nice. The cheap tuners had to be upgraded to keep the guitar in tune but that is to be expected.

I think this guitar will withstand extended live playing although I use it only one night of the week during a musicians night that I host and I only use it for certain types of music.

Never had to deal with Jay Turser.

I have been playing for over thirty years and I own a number of guitars (two Fenders, one Gibson, one PRS, one Squier, and two Yamahas}. If this guitar were stolen I probably would not buy another one but I must admit that for 135 dollars the guitar is playable. It has the look and feel of an expensive jazz box but not the warm woody tone of one.

For an inexpensive box this has all the appropriate appointments.

I do jazz, rockabilly and psychobilly, and Blues to pay the bills. Run into a Butcher tube amp/ G-B 212 cab most of the time.

I just don't appreciate the sound this box generates. Even acoustically it's pretty thin. tried with several string sets, but it just don't work.

Standard set-up, no biggie. Really nicely put together, but some problem areas like the bridge adjuster stick up far enough to make you bleed (no kidding, I mean spurting blood if you are not carefull. Course this could be a performance plus. And the supplied strings sux big time.

I don't really like this box, it was cheap, therefore it doesn't get special treatment. It hasn't failed or gotten weird.

I don't speak gook

Been playing since your Mama was a gleam in your GRANDA'S EYE. Would I buy another? Probably not, I just don't think it's a special item. Not only that, it really isn't something I could recommend for one of my students.

It is what it is! As a knockoff of a Gibson ES 175 it is limited to that guitars features. I have a friend I've played with 30 years, he worked in a music store for 10 years which was a Gibson dealer, he sat and played the Gibsons for years. His first comment when he picked it up was "Wow, just like a Gibson ES 175!". After playing it he was very impressed with the neck, action, intonation.

I've alway mainly been a rocker. I've been in bands that played top 40 country (but not for long). I always played old Hank Williams, George Jones, Marty Robbins ect. on acoustic guitar at home(I love the old stuff I hated as a kid). I started getting into slide guitar and open tuning about 5 years ago and bought a Jay Turser electric resonator guitar. I was impressed with its quality versus price which is what led to buying this guitar. I don't plan on playing slide on this guitar, I got it for rockabilly and blues but who knows.
The pickups sound good, the pots and switch are crap. The 3 way toggles are notorious for cracking and popping in most these cheaper guitars. I planned on replacing them when I bought the guitar so its no big deal, I may keep the pickups. I'm amazed the output jack wasn't a problem, thats usually the first thing to go.
I've got a lot of guitars, mostly solid bodies, acoustics, or resonators, but I never really had an electric archtop hollowbody Jazz guitar. I'm into English amps (Marshall, Hiwatt). I'm not much on effects, I've got an old Premier tube reverb and an Echoplex I had rebuilt that I use. I've got rack mount guitar effects units (don't use them anymore), morley pedals, envelope followers, Rat pedals, etc., don't really use them.

Bought used on Ebay so don't know about factory setup. When I received the guitar it had 5 strings. I stripped it down, cleaned and polished then put on new strings. The heaviest I had was "10". I play 9 or 10's on solidbodies. The 10's are like rubber bands on this thing, I may bump it to 12's in a week or two.
I planned on replacing the bridge, but after tuning and adjusting for intonation I was pleasantly surprised.
The neck and frets are great, no problem, plays great.
The finish on this is not museum quality, but I bought this to play not look at. It is more than slick enough for me, the fit and finish are far beyond what you pay for.

Pete Townsend would wear himself out beating the stage with this thing. As soon as you pick it up the first impression you get is "solid". It is built like a tank. I planned on putting Imperial machine heads on it. The Faux Pearl (green plastic) tuners actually seen to keep it in tune, so I may keep them. They certainly have the Gibson look to them. I know the young guys are thinking "what's up with the green tuners!" Thirty years ago I saw a lot of Les Pauls and misc. Gibsons sporting these, so they have a visual appeal to anyone familiar with them.
Everything seems very solid and dependable (except pots and switch).
I would not hesitate to gig without a backup.

Don't know or care. I got more than what I paid for. I planned on replacing the electronics and bridge. I'm happy with the bridge and pickups...pots, switchs and output jacks are consumables on a guitar anyway, almost like strings, you end up replacing them even on the $$$ guitars.

Been playing over 35 years.
I'd get another one if lost or stolen.
I love the neck and action.
It compares well to the Gibson ES 175 in my opinion. I chose this one because it was cheap. The day I got it I was impressed enough to purchase a Jay Turser Colonel (black), which has more eye candy and a vibrato.
My friend after playing it said "Anybody who wants one of these better get it now before they stop making them or the quality goes down!" We've seen it happen again and again over the years. A company makes a good product, another company buy them and the quality goes to hell.
My advise to anyone wanting one of these is get it now! The U.S. is already cutting back the clothing imported from China, these may be next. For the price this is like a sore peter, even if you replace the pickups the bridge and electronics you'll have a fraction of the price it would cost for a big name! A man named Ruskin would definately advise you to grab this bargain while it's here. In 10 years these will be going for twice the price. I was looking at old Silvertone and Harmony archtops for months before I snagged this guitar. It is built far better (bulletproof), but still has a vintage look. Hmmmm, I'm thinking one of the blonde ones would be nice too, maybe with the vine inlay on the neck...you know you can never have too may guitars (despite what my two X's think)you can always get your money out of a gun or guitar if you got a good deal. Have you ever tried to get a good return on a diamond (good luck).

2004 left-handed model JT-136. "Tobacco Sunburst" finish, with all the same appointments mentioned by the other reviewers. Bought with a poorly fitting case, which was defective. Same model case was shipped to me by Jay Turser two days after calling dealer who sold this to me.

This is JT's knockoff of the modern Gibson ES-175 2-pickup model.

Decent sounding Jazz instrument. I play it through Acoustic Image Clarus 2R with Raezer's Edge Stealth 12ER. I am able to get a sound that pleases me through my setup. It does not have the tonal qualities of my Hofner VP, but it has a fairly even sound throughout the fretboard, no buzzing, no pickup problem, no noise.

I asked the dealer to put on a set of big roundwound strings, and give the truss rod a crank for a rough setup. He used a set of D'Addario .013's, which were the biggest he had. When I got the instrument, I put on Thomastik Infeld BB114's (.014 - .055), and the action and intonation were reasonable. The bridge is, as expected, movable, and of adequate quality. Everything else must have been factory setup. No serious problems with playability factors: pickups are balanced (string-to-string) and not too high; bridge holds strings at apprpopriate height and distance between strings is good.
Finishing and construction are flawed in several ways. The "horn" on the lower bout was badly joined and simply painted over then finished. Ugly. There are several finish flaws in several locations. The dealer informed me of these, and gave a slight discount on price. Since I do not care about the cosmetics, these flaws are quite minor for me. As there is no fret buzzing, the neck is fairly straight, the bridge mounts properly to the top of the instrument, the tuners work well, and it is generally very playable, I am not complaining. Not impressed by Jay Turser product quality control, but not complaining.

Most of the hardware should last years. I do not gig with this instrument. It is used for practicing and recreational pursuits. For those purposes, it is dependable. And, given the flaws mentioned above, I am more comfortable taking it around the block, without worries and concerns about damaging the instrument.

The dealer was able to get a new case from Jay Turser, shipped directly to me. It was in my hands two days after calling about the problem. That's not bad.

Playing for 40+ years. Own Hofner VP, Veillette MK-IV (7-string), Ovation Celebrity Deluxe [all left-handed].

If stolen or lost, I might get another one. It's a "practice" instrument for me, so I might replace with a 25 1/2" scale guitar, like the Hofner VP. For the price, it's hard to find a playable left-handed archtop.

The case is for a 17" archtop that is not quite as deep as this model. It is not exactly a "hard shell" case, in my opinion.

By now you should be aware of the features of this guitar -- they are the same as described below. The features of the guitar itself are what you can expect, nothing special. Therefore middle point "5" rating.

There is a serious trouble with the sound when both of the pickups are selected and both volume pots are @ maximum: Very thin and weak sound. I believe this is due to incorrect wiring. It is extremely hard to resolder anything with hollow body guitars that do not have an openable back plate. My favorite sound indeed would be middle pickup switch position but due to the problem with the guitar I cannot use it. Other two switch positions are OK however.

Original set up was terrible -- high action, wrong intonation, too much neck relief. I like low action and after truss rod and bridge adjustments I could still not get it low enough. Therefore, I needed to start leveling frets with micro files, I needed to do about 16 of them -- can you believe, with a brand new guitar! Finish is acceptable, I do not care about the various manufacturing defects in the surface of the guitar. Jack plate was and still is also missing. It is very hard to tune the G-string. The pickup selector switch feels cheap and very loose in the middle and bridge positions. Ugly green plastic tuners.

Even for practice I take a back-up since this guitar feels so fragile. Probably will not stand live gigs. The bridge is freely standing, just pressure of the strings keeps it in place. Even small external force can misplace it, resulting in bad intonation.

They did not get any replies at all to my questions about the missing parts, etc -- I am still waiting and the guitar is supposed to be under warranty!! This is a Chinese-made guitar, be aware, my experiences about their support is practically non-existent and it seems that they do not care about their customers or repeat business.

Played about 25 years, have various guitars, mainly older solid body Peaveys. If stolen, no -- no J. Tursers again, please! Good idea but poor quality and support. Bough because of price -- cannot believe that mine is the only one having serious troubles in these reviews.

BOTTOM LINE: DO NOT BUY!

This guitar is a wonderful knockoff of a Gibson ES-137, right down to the split parallelogram fretboard inlay (though, I'm sure that they're plastic). Like the original, it has dual humbuckers, a rosewood bridge, trapeze tailpiece, & green Kluson-style tuning keys. My only wish was that it had a piezo pickup, otherwise, I clouldn't ask for more in a jazz box.

As this is my first jazz box (I've always wanted one, but found them waaaaaaaaay too expensive), I purposely waited over a month before writing this review. I wanted to get familiar with the instrument before diving in. I spent the first day or two tinkering around with the action and intonation before I got it the way that I like. Also, I considered replacing the wooden bridge with a tune-o-matic as I have found that the wood ones often have "deadened" the sound on other guitars, not the case with the Turser, though. The natural wood bridge & hollow body give this guitar a resonance unlike anything I have played before. It feels very natural and open. My only gripe here is that something (I haven't tracked down what, yet) keeps vibrating with the harmonic resonance of certain chords. This only affects the "unplugged" sound of the instrument, and only a few minor chords. When amplified, everything is crystal-clear. The guitar literally sings. Just like my Les Paul, it adds rich character to anything played on it. I'm rating the sound as a 9 due to the as yet unidentieied vibration.

I find that the guitar sounds great whether clean or distorted, though I have not had the opportunity to crank it up and test for feedback issues due to a new baby in the house. Mostly, I think it is best suited to jazz, blues, rock-a-billy, or country, though it's pretty mean when the gain leves go up, too.

This guitar was not set up at all from the factory. I think that the only reason that the strings were on it was to hold the bridge in place. However, it required only minimal adjustment to the action and bridge placement to get everything in line. I also tweaked the pickup heights to my liking, though they were very usable from the get go.

The overall fit and finish is outstanding. Well beyond anything in it's price range. The only flaw (very tiny) that I can find is a rough spot where the lower bout comes to a point, which can easily be buffed out. I'm rating it a 10 in this category for it's outstanding value.

I haven't had the chance to play out using this guitar yet, but have no doubt that it is up to the task. It seems very reliable and solidly built.

Don't ever expect to deal with the company if something goes arwy. I'll likely either fix it myself or buy a new one.

I have been playing over 23 years and have owned dozens of guitars through the years ranging from a POS Hondo to a Les Paul Custom (my pride and joy) and have also built several of my own. This instrument from Jay Turser has added a whole new dimension to my collection without breaking the bank. I am most definately SOLD on the quality and craftsmanship of these fine guitars. If it were lost or stolen, I would go out and buy another in a heartbeat. Bang for the buck, I think that Turser guitars offer one of the best values out there today. Go out and try one for yourself, you won't be disappointed.