Tradition S2003

Made in Korea. Not sure of date. Solid flame maple cap over mahogany body. Double bound like a LP Custom. Two gold plated passive Hums with standard LP controls. Gloss honey burst finish. Standard TOM w/stop tail. Grover style tuners. Thin neck like 60's LP with a rosewood fingerboard. Dealer included a case. Gave it a 9 as it could have more bells and whistles but is staying true to the model it is patterned after.

I play blues and rock so it fits right in. I've played it through my KL-50 Jones tube amp. It sounds good. The bridge tone pot is noisy though. This guitar sat in the shop a while before I came along. If you like a LP sound, this has it.

The action was set up very well but the bridge was off a bit on intonation. The nut needed to be filed down as well as the strings sat a bit high on it for my taste and the grooves were too deep. What I mean is that the nut in total was too tall and the grooves, though too deep were still leaving the strings sitting too high above the first fret. The top wood is beautiful! Way better than the price tag reflected. Well bookmatched. The pups were pretty close and needed only a minor tweak. The fretwork is very good. Nothing needed there. Noisy tone pot as mentioned as before. Excellent wood for the money. Minor flaws in the binding in a few places. Purely cosmetic and not visible from a distance.

I'll replace the bridge & tailpiece though they probably would hold up for quite a while. I love TonePros! The finish seems durable and the tuners are solid. I'll replace the noisy pot. The rest of the electronics do appear to be road worthy. If I had to, I'd take it by itself to a gig.

Lifetime warranty. Never dealt with the manufacturer but the dealer is good.

Compared to Epiphone LP's, it out-performs them. It has better fit & finish for the most part and the wood is better by far than I've seen. The pickups are far more consistant and generally sound better in my opinion. Compared to Gibson Les Paul's, it isn't quite as nice in the hardware and is made of a few more pieces of wood, but it plays as well as most and is a fraction of the cost.

I just wanted to add one comment to my review below. Obviously, I wanted a Les Paul, so why didn't I just get the "real thing?" One word: Value. I gig a lot, and the thought of dragging a $2000 Gibson into the tough world of bars and parties is scary. The Tradition has the look and more importantly, the sound at a price tag that makes sense for my purposes. I will still take good care of it, and expect it to look like new for years, but accidents happen. Until I am making the mega-rockstar bucks, the Tradition is the guitar for this working musician. Hell, even when I am making the mega-bucks, I'll probably still play this guitar--it is a great guitar whatever the price.

I'm not sure when it was made. An inlay at the 12th fret says "S2003," but I think that is the model, not the year of manufacture.

It was made in Korea. I guess a lot of people still think that American made guitars are the only good ones, but for over 30 years the Japanese and Koreans have been coming on strong, and their guitars compete very well with American-made for quality. They are light years ahead of the Chinese, Pakistanis and Indonesians, but it won't be long before those follks get better, too. The Tradition S20, which is Indonesian-made, is pretty much the same guitar as the S2000, but I played three S20's and none of them were as nice feeling, playing or looking as the S2000.

It is a very accurate Les Paul copy, right down to the weight. Of course it has a mahagony body with a 5/8 inch thick maple top. Mine is sort of an amber sunburst flamed maple. The top is so pretty I removed the pick guard to reveal more of the wood.

To rate a guitar on its features is a bit difficult. In the 50's when the Les Paul was invented, individual volume and tone knobs foreach pickup and a pickup selector switch constituted lots of features. Today, there are sustainer circuits, locking vibrato bridges, 13-pin synth connections and myriad other bells and whistles. I have to give the Tradition a 10 simply because it has exactly the right features to do what it was designed to do--that is, be exactly like a Gibson Les Paul for a lot less money.

This guitar nails the classic Les Paul sound. Clean notes are fat and round but have a nice edge. Add a little distortion and crunch away! It is never muddy, even with extreme high gain. Sustain is very good, though not quite as good as my neck-through-body Brian Moore. The other night at a gig I held an A chord at the end of a song, and it would have rung out all night if I hadn't eventually let go.

I really can't say enough about the excellent tone of this guitar. Gibson invented the sound, but my Tradition has that sound in spades.

I play classic rock, hard rock and metal. This guitar covers a lot of that ground. No guitar gets a 10 from me in this category, because no one guitar can do it all. But this one does its crunchy, ballsy thing to perfection.

I am very impressed with the low action of this guitar. Factory spec for a Strat is 2.2mm-2.4mm over the 12th fret. For Brian Moore it is 2.0mm. When I brought my Tradition guitar home the action measured in at about 1.5mm over the 12th fret, and there was very little fret buzz. I raised it to just under 2.0mm so it would feel similar to my other guitars. This eliminated all fret buzz except for very slight buzzing of the 6th string above the 15th fret. I probably could have raised it another 0.2mm and eliminated all buzz, but it is inaudible through an amp, so I left it nice and low.

Intonation is quite good. I have installed an Earvana compensated nut on my other guitars, but there is no need for that with the Tradtion.

The finish is pretty good, but not perfect. There is a flaw in finishn in the curve of the cutout, only visible to me as I look down while playing. The varnish is a little rough in places on the back, but the top is perfect. The flamed maple is not quite the quality of some $2000 Gibsons that I have seen in the shops, but it is still extremely pretty.

The nut is a bit sharp on the corners, but the frets are all perfectly smooth and well set. The gold bridge, gold pickup covers and gold tuners are all cosmetically perfect.

I have been gigging regularly with this guitar since I bought it 5 months ago. It seems very sturdy and well made. I replaced the strap buttons with Dunlop Straplocks, but the original equipment strap buttons were perfectly fine.

As I have had no problems so far, it gets a 10in this category.

I called the company to ask for a manual. The guy who answered was very friendly and helpful, even though the only literature this small company has is its catalog. I guess I can figure out how to change the strings without a manual.

I have been playing guitar since 1982. I have Yamaha and Ibazez acoustics, a Strat, a Brian Moore I1 and the Tradition. The Strat and Brian Moore are very nice guitars, but neither of them can get that heavy, snarly tone that I was looking for. The Tradition has that tone. I am very pleased with nearly everything about this guitar.

Not really sure about the year, hard to find out much info on these. it's a LP copy and they've done there homework for a korean made guitar there getting it! I had a 1979 les paul standard goldtop which I've read they didn't make in 79 however never the less I owned one and I lost it casulty of divorce ouch! so some years later when I was ready to start the search to replace it I bought a MTP-350 tradition ( paul reed smith copy ) to have something to play while I found that special paul however I was so taken by the quality I started thinking about there paul copies so I started the search, I tried the S-20 model which is made in Indonisia and I wasn't impressed however I knew the S2003 was Korean made as my MTP-350 is so I started watchin Ebay and I found it and won it for $352.50 and I'm I'm so pleased with it that my search is over and this is the guitar I will be playing! the sound was amazing the worst problem is trying to calm it down the pickups are so hot that I have to play em in the low input side of my amp to keep it clean it up for mellow tunes and it certainly delivers when you crank it up!

This guitar is a perfect fit for me, I tried the Stat route and though the guitar I had Fender Blackie strat it just was'nt me I've always like the Humbucker tone and this one has it.

I bought it used and was sitting in the window waiting for it to come in new set of wires in hand and waiting to see if I got burnt. I wired it up and the neck was fine action was perfect, intonation was out and a few adjustments on a few saddles and it was ready to play.

once I pull it from the case I let it get with the room inviroment and tune and it stays the rest of the gig. I do not take another guitar with me this is all I need, haven't even broke a string.

I've contacted the company once to ask and got a response from the VP within 24hrs, these come with a life time warrenty so they believe in there product.

I've been makin noise since around 76, if this where stolen or lost I would start my hunt again and this would be in the hunt as I go for sound not the name. I believe in buying American made and buying a guitar on Ebay is risky and I went in knowing this, I do not regret buying this Korean made guitar it is a quality guitar and the price was amazing. Gibson needs to take a look at what there doing it's called pricing yourself out of the market.