Samick AV5

New (mid 2002 model according to serial number) Greg Bennett AV5 in wine red. Got a killer price brand new from Crossroads Music only $199!!! Typical Korean Les Paul style with flat top. typical controls and electronics, P90 type pickups, full size 500k pots, decent capacitors, all cavities fully shield painted, solid 3 piece well matched mahogany body with a beautiful, curly, highly figured, mahogany veneer on the top. Set mahogany neck with typical Korean spliced headstock. Of particular interest is the neck joint which has a long neck tenon joint, it's easily as long of a tenon as a Gibson Historic, it extends past 3/4 of the way into the neck pickup cavity. Very nice rosewood for the fingerboard with abalone dot inlays. Real Grover tuners, single binding on top and neck. Chrome plating seems to be very well done too. Very light for an LP flat top, slightly less than 8 pounds. Also, it has no pickguard nor are there any holes provided for one, I like that as it shows off the nice curly mahogany top.

Very impressive sound considering the generic import P 90 pups are usually average sounding at best, but these pups flat out rock! Unplugged this guitar is very lively for a flat top LP, I have vintage Gibson Les Pauls from the 1950's and new Historic Les Pauls and this one is almost just as lively unplugged and has some great sustain. Plugged in clean the P90's deliver that tone that only a P90 can, kick in the overdrive and they crunch and grind with the best of em. A good set of pickups would make this a killer guitar but I can easily live with the stock P90's for a long time. In the middle position there is a nice chime/quack like a good strat has, also in the middle position both pickups are set up so they are then humbucking reducing noise dramatically. If you don't know, a P90 is as noisy or noisier than a Strat type single coil, they have more output than most strat type pickups too.

As on other Samicks and Korean guitars typical Korean fret work, frets were nice and level with no sharp ends but the material is a bit soft and the final polish step is missing leaving a gritty feel, easily enough fixed however. The ABR-1 copy bridge rattled a bit and did not provide enough travel to intonate the G string as they usually do have this problem. A tune-o- matic bridge copy from Stew Mac for $16 remedied those problems easily enough. The wine red finish is beautiful, reasonably thin ,not that overly thick, crappy dipped in finish of the 1990's. A few minor finish glitches can be found IF you look VERY carefully under good light, but overall it is a very well done finish and very nice binding job. The curly magogany veneer on the top is stunning and a nice touch to cover up the average looking mahogany used for the body. The nut which seems to be bone or tusque was reasonably well cut and only required a final slight lowering of each string for optimum action. I like it low and clean and this guitar delivers that too. Action is set at a low 2/64" both sides 12th fret and it plays clean and fast!

No reason not to think it won't hold up. Strap buttons are nicely partly recessed into the body giving additional stability to them.

Don't know, haven't tried to contact them. One serious problem that persists for Samick is info and availability. This model for example does not list on their site or in catalogs that it has abalone dot inlays, I would think that would be something you would list as one of its features. I don't know of any dealers I can go to to try these either, I have to scour the net to find them for sale online and prices vary dramatically from site to site IF you can even find them. I've seen models that are not even listed anywhere too. SAMICK, wake up, get a good dealer network, and good info available! The pics of each model on the Samick web site are sad jokes at best, that's no way to show off your product with a single, low resolution, small pic. Get some good, larger, multiple views put up for each model Samick! And while your at it dump the cheap lower models from the Bennett line, AV1,2,3, RL 1,2 all make the Bennett line look bad, give em a seperate, budget line of their own fer cripes sakes!

I've also heard a price increase is on the way and I see most models are going for a lot more now on the net as of this month. BIG mistake Samick, DON'T do it, roll those prices back!! you'll loose the market if you get to Epiphone level street prices!

sorry, I'm off my soapbox now folks, LOL!

Been playing 25 years and repairing, teaching guitar too. I have A LOT of guitars. Anything from 1939 Gibson archtops, 1950's Les Pauls to 2002 Historics, a Guild X-700, Strats, Teles, Hagstrom Swede, and everything inbetween. I've been watching these Greg Bennetts from the start, I currently have an AV7, a 1999 factory prototype AV6 that is very nice too, an RL4, an RL5 and a JZ4.

Early on they had some serious QC issues on many models from what I was seeing. I myself got a really, really bad SG TR2 Torino a few years back when they first came out, but they really seem to have gotten things fixed up now. I have several different Bennett models and these newest ones are some of the best I've seen. They easily are vastly better than Epiphones and careful shopping will get you one for almost 45% LESS money than an Epi. Agile guitars from Rondo Music are the latest, greatest buzz in cheap LP copies, but IMO these Bennetts are easily better overall and usually just as cheap or cheaper too. The jazz box models, JZ 2, 3 & 4 are killer for the price too. Although I own some very expensive guitars I find myself grabbing for this AV5 and my AV7 on a regular basis I like em so much, and that says a lot to me when I can play anything I want but my gut preference many times is for these budget beauties. And if you can find it like I did at only $199 brand new, well then this guitar has to be THE best deal out there in a setneck flat top P90 LP style guitar! I rate it an 8 overall just because of what it is, it's a very, very nice budget guitar, but.....If I factor in the price I paid I would really have to say this rates off the scale at an 11, seriously, I mean it, I've seen A LOT of $200 guitars in my day and this thing is light years better than many $700-$1,000 ones!


***One warning, the lower model Bennetts like AV1, AV2, AV3 are TOTAL junk. Although they "look" very similar to the AV5, 6 & 7 they are built out of much cheaper nato wood for the body and neck instead of mahogany and have cheap pressed plywood for the arch tops, NOT carved solid mahogany wood tops like the AV6 & 7! I know this for a fact, I've taken several apart. AVOID ALL the cheap Bennett lower models of the entire line at all costs, total junk IMO, the same holds true for the RL1 and RL2, total junk, entirely different wood used than the RL3,4,or 5! Also beware....a few models like the Ultramatics and the Torino have photo quilt tops instead of real wood veneer.