Product: Tradition G-12
Price Paid: USD 199
Submitted
11/22/2008
at
06:47pm
by
Tennessee
Features
:
9
G-12 gold series, with the added gold appointments in all areas. Gold Grover tuners, gold tremelo bridge, gold plug-in, etc. Body is painted the "Vintage White" listed on the website for the standard G-12 and G-10, and it has a laminated pickguard in a tortoise shell color. Overall, it was the color combination that made me pick this thing up on a lazy Saturday afternoon, as I visited a local dealer while my wifey got the groceries. Gold, Cream, and Tortoiseshell. OOOH!
SSH pickup configuration with one volume and two tones, five way switch, all controls in cream color, with top hat knobs with gold number inlays.
22 frets, maple neck with the standard mahog. stripe on the back, rosewood fretboard, nice "T" fake tortoise shell inlays, looks like jumbo frets, maybe mini-jumbos?
Nut is fake bone. Standard wing hold downs for top four strings on the headstock, a-la Strat. All gold.
Bolt on neck, gold plate on the back, tremelo plate cover is plastic that matches the paint color dead on, inlaid, held down with gold screws. Nice. All the screws in the pickguard and pickups are gold. Pickup bodies are cream with "Tradition" stamped on them. Too bad the pickup pins are silver. Actually, a beautiful instrument to look at.
Standard three spring, six front screw hold-down tremelo with a gold whammy bar with a nice cream handle.
Sound
:
7
This is what sold the guitar. Sort of. I picked it up on color, and here we are, late in the day, guy about ready to close. I plugged it into a simple Line 6 15 watter on Clean, and WOW, did this thing shine. I don't know where these pickups came from, but in addition to being hot, they are actually way different sounding, something you often don't see on a cheap guitar. The neck single is standard rock-strat. Put the neck and middle together and you have a strong classic rock sound, or bluesy if you just tone down the treble a little bit. The bridge humbucker, now that thing is just not like anything I own, and I got ten axes of all types. It HONKS, is the only way I can describe it. It's just crazy fun, but I don't know what to play with it?? Honks, quacks, LOUD. Another poster said something similiar.
I can get a rich, bluesy sound if I fiddle with the knobs and stay off the bridge pickup, (the tone actually works pretty well, despite the postings about cheap pots.)
But a problem lurks...that I didn't really see until I got it home on my tube amp. The single pickups, the middle two posts stick up too far compared to the others, and those strings are HOT-HOT-HOT, no way to settle them down short of getting into the pickup. Not adjustable. Supposedly Mr. Jim Matthews, original Tradition owner, (now deceased), designed these, with knowledge he gained from EMG and others. Well, those pins are too high. Way higher than the contour of the neck. With that being said, if you like hot rock chords and spend a lot of time in the middle strings, this is a great thing, but to be playing a nice 12 bar blues riff, (we all do it), and to hit D and G and have them way louder and hotter, well, that is a little funky. The humbucker does not suffer this, but that pickup is squacking HOT on it's own.
Other stuff - 5 way switch is silent. Knobs turn smoothly and silent, do their job. I play it through a Crate Palomino Head-Cab setup, with my RP500 on bypass. Seems like too nice of a sound to mess up with effects. Until you hit those hot strings. ARRGGUUGH!!
Dealer gave me a new set of strings with the unit, my choice, I took GHS Boomer .09s. Seems like just right for this unit.
Except for the high pins on the two singles, this was a ten. Alas, it is not to be. Three off for "hot strings".
Action, Fit, & Finish
:
9
Action came too high, all the saddles were up too high, sure sign too much tension on the neck. Cleaned it up, (it had sat on his floor for so long it started to tarnish), polished the body and took off the protective plastic film here and there, put on the new strings. Immediately releived the neck some and started lowering the saddles. Got them down past half-way and now it's got fine action, no buzz. Also, as a standard thing with me, tightened the tremelo spring bracket on the back so it is usable, but not in the way of tuning. Front 6 screws were locked down, raised them half turn, now the tremelo works great.
Fit and finish is really nice. I love the color combination of vintage white with the tortoise shell pickguard, and gold appointments. All polished up, it looks quite grand. Sounds to match. Intonation was dead on from the store. Rare, but nice!! It moved a bit when I adjusted the saddles down, got it back easily.
Has the standard wing cutouts for the body to reach the upper frets, actually the fretboard cutouts are so deep it's kind of like an SG, little bit. Has an Ibanez type headstock, save for the four Strat holddowns. Little of everything here.
Pickups were too low, probably to try and compensate for the stupid D and G pins being too high on the single pickups.
No flaws, really, save for the pickup pins. Nothing wrong that a decent setup didn't take care of.
Pretty well made, actually!
Reliability/Durability
:
9
Well, this guitar was on the floor of the dealer for a while. He said he felt that he would drop Tradition since he has heard they may have a cash problem. Who knows? I get all kinds of stories from all kinds of dealers. I like walking into different dealers and talking to them. They all tell different tales.
The unit is solid, as solid as a low end guitar could be. Appointed higher than a beginner unit with the nice gold accents, but I don't think I will see anyone gigging with a Tradition G-12 series anytime soon. Come-on, you gonna do a gig with a $200 axe? Not much to go wrong, though, as long as you don't abuse the tremelo. Bolt on neck, standard controls, that's about it. Strap buttons are good, metal, gold colored and solid.
The gold will tarnish - as my dealer found out, but it can be repolished, as I did it in a couple minutes. Solid unit, overall.
Customer Support
:
10
Never heard of them until I bought it.
Got on the internet, looked up their website, their last posting for introductions was 2006. Kind of dated, huh...
My dealer was listed as a dealer.
Other than that, hey, it's a cheap guitar, but my dealer would take care of me for anything I needed with it. Good dealership. And he gave me new strings and carefully packed it in a carton, wrapping it in soft packaging like it was a $1000 guitar. Even offered the use of a gig bag to take it home if I wanted.
Cleveland Music, Cleveland, TN. Good store...
Overall Rating
:
10
Been playing about ten months, everyday, save for one that I can remember where I worked to hard at work. I try for at least an hour a day practice, and it goes by fast.
Play a lot of classic rock and blues. Not a metal guy. Don't take lessons, self taught. Too much gear to list. Now 11 guitars and three amps, two big multi effect pedals and one for my Spyder Jam. I like Digitechs.
I bought this cause I liked the color, and the sound was smooooth. (Until I hit that bridge pickup). But no matter. I like picking up units that may dissapear someday. I own a Rouge Triple Lipstick, an old Samick Strat knockoff, a Johnson Strat copy with those now impossible to find EMG pickups, a Crate Palomino Cab-Head setup, lots of stuff like that in addition to the standard stuff. So I like finding the bargains and the stuff that is dissapearing.
I looked at all the stuff he had in his shop, and this seemed like the deal of the day. $199 brand new. Sold.
Product: Tradition G-12
Price Paid: USD 191.00
Submitted
06/28/2007
at
06:18am
by
Leftee
Features
:
9
Tradition G12 lefty. New but I assume it was made in 2005 or 2006. HSS configuration with Tradition AlNiCo pickups (confirmed with owner of company - who is very responsive to email, BTW). G12 is HSS and G10 is SSS. Basswood body in a Strat shape. Metallic blue color. Maple neck with nicely streaked 22 fret rosewood neck. Neck is on the thin and flat side, but not uncomfortably so. I find it a nice profile. Frets are not jumbos (don't know what size they are) and are nicely finished. No sharp fret ends or buzzing frets. Decent sealed tuners that seem to be around 14:1 (my guess). Pickups are AlNiCo. Bridge HB ohms out at 15.7k and the middle and neck single coils each ohm out at 5.7k. I can't find a flaw or blemish on the guitar.
Sound
:
8
This sounds really good except for the balance between the bridge pickup and the middle and neck single coils. All the pickups sound great on their own and the 2 single coils sound good together. The bridge pickup output is WAY hotter than the other pickups. It also sounds a bit "honky" and mid-rangey when played clean. In overdirve it's a hoot! Pure RAWK tones! Even after lower the bridge pickup and raising the 2 single coils, the imbalance is still glaring. They're great pickups though. For being so hot, the bridge humbucker has decent articulation when you get it away from the strings. It's just that they don't match up with each other well. I figured I could go to higher output single coils or a lower output HB. I decided to try a lower output HB - which has been ordered (Tonerider AlNiCo 2). I took off 2 points because of the output imbalance.
Action, Fit, & Finish
:
7
Action out of the box was high, but it was easy to adjust down. Intonation was spot-on out of the box. Guitar showed up nearly in tune. Fretwork is excellent so I could drop the action pretty low without buzzes. I couldn't find a blemish on the guitar. It looks great! The rosewood fingerboard has some really nice streaks in it that came out really well when I oiled it with Fret Doctor fret board oil. Metallic blue paint is flawlessly applied and looks excellent! I did find that the pots were wired lefty, and that never works. Audio taper pots wired lefty never work right as the taper is on the wrong end of pot's range. The numbers on the knobs don't correspond either. 1 is loud and 10 is off. I opened it up and found some really crappy mini pots (500k). I rewired them righty, but they still didn't work very well. I ungraded to full sized pots, but be aware that the bottom tone control pot can't be changed to a full size pot as the pickguard won't go back on the guitar. The body isn't routed enough to accommodate a full size pot in that position. I wired the guitar for master volume and master tone controls, so the bottom pot became unneeded. I installed an original mini pot in that position and put a knob on it, but it isn't hooked up to anything. I deducted a 3 points for the pots. First - for a lefty they should be wired the standard "righty" way. Even after I wired them righty, they didn't have a very good range.
Reliability/Durability
:
9
From a reliability/durability standpoint I think this guitar is well made with the exception of the pots.
Customer Support
:
10
I did the mods/repairs myself. It also gave me the opportunity to get into the guitar further than the average player would. The guitar's fitr and finish and general build quality is good. Dennis at Adirondack guitars is helpful. I know he would have taken the guitar back if I'd asked. I didn't want to do that. I've corresponded directly with Tradition and my questions have always been answered in a timely fashion.
Overall Rating
:
8
I've been playing off and on since 1984. Blues and Classic Rock. I like this guitar a lot. I'd buy it again if I had to. In this price class there's no comparison. If they put decent pots in them and tamed that bridge pickup a bit it would be perfect!
