Samick LS450 artist electric guitar Written: Apr 09 '08 (Updated Apr 09 '08) Product Rating: Pros: outstanding, fast, slim taper neck Cons: very cheap hardware The Bottom Line: This model is no longer made but was replaced by the Avion guitar lineup in the Samick line

cheetah1's Full Review: Samick Traditional Lp-Style Solid Body Electric Gu...

This is a review of a Samick LS 450 artist Les Paul copy that I have owned for 5 years. Samick no longer makes the LS450 but instead have a Torino line of Les Paul copys that run from 180 dollars up the 500 dollar range. This guitar was purchased online at zzounds.com for 200 dollars. This guitar looked a bit nicer in photographs than some of the Epiphone models I was looking at in the 200 dollar price range. Of the 15 guitars I own now 14 of them have been purchased online. I live in a rural area so I really don't get the chance to visit nice music stores, so I got into the habit of buying gear online. I've had excellent success buying acoustic guitars online but have had a mixed bag of results buying electric guitars online. I also own 3 ukuleles and a mandolin. This Samick LS450 model designation seems to have been given to a lot of different Les Paul copys in their line up. This guitar has a bolt on neck with a solid 3 piece mahogany body. The body has an 3/16 arched top that is made of 3 plys of laminated wood. It has binding that extends around the guitar and up the neck. The binding has aging toner applied that gives the guitar a retro look. All the other plastic parts have that aged look also. The body has a cherry sunburst finish. It's a cheap paint job but looks o.k. The sunburst finish extends up the entire length of the guitars neck. The guitar has a rosewood fingerboard with dot inlays. The neck itself is a slim taper design, it's very fast and plays great with no fret buzz. Medium frets are installed. The hardware on the guitar is cheap. The chrome plating was falling off the pickups and the tune-o-matic bridge when the guitar was brand new. I used some silver paint to touch up the chrome on the tune-o-matic bridge while the pickups were replaced with better quality units. The tuners are economy units but work well, no complaints. The bell volume and tone control knobs were swapped out with gold Gibson style speed knobs. There are 2 wood seams in back of the guitar however only one seam is really noticible, the other seam blends in better. The neck looks to be 2 pieces of wood joined together. The binding on the guitar was well done except for a glue spot on top of the headstock. I scraped off that glue spot with my fingernail and was left with a chipped paint blemish on the headstock, that sucks. The Samick logo on the headstock also looks cheap. It looks like the guitar brushed up against something before the paint dried at the factory which left a small blemish on the side of the guitar, no biggie. The stock pickups sounded cold and harsh, I did not like them. These were replaced with nickel covered golden age alnico pickups from stewmac.com. These are warm sounding pickups that have a coil split feature that is used on the guitar. I have push-pull pots installed on the volume knobs to activate the coil split function. Unplugged the guitar sounds nothing like a Gibson Les Paul guitar which has wonderful sustain and a harp like quality. I have owned one high end Gibson Les Paul model back in the 80's but the guitar had serious issues with it's weight and had terrible balance problems when being played sitting down so I sold it after a couple years. Played clean the LS450 artist sounds like a jazz guitar. With the coil split feature on the guitar sounds different but it still has a jazz tone, nothing at all like a Fender. The guitar sounds great at many different tone settings, very versatile. Playing with distortion adds sustain to the guitars tone. The LS450 does sound like a Les Paul model to my ears when playing with distortion, a very gritty, warm tone is produced. The stock pickups had a tendency to overdrive my amp and the golden age pickups do the same thing. To get rid of this problem I just turn the middle tone knob on my amplifiers control panel to a setting of 3. The guitar has great playability with it's slim taper neck and light weight. It would be good for stage use in a live setting. I paid 200 dollars for this Samick LS450 artist and I think I got my moneys worth. About a year after I purchased this guitar I bought one of the Agile Les Paul copies from rondomusic.com for 250 dollars. That solid 2 piece ash Agile guitar is the most amazing electric guitar I have ever purchased as far as getting a high quality musical instrument at a low price. There are a lot of nice, low cost Les Paul copies on the market today but if I was interested in getting a new Les paul style guitar today I would only consider buying an Agile from rondomusic.com.