SC-550 II FTF : Under the hood and beyond

After watching all the You Tube videos on this guitar, including a so called "deep review" I found that not one went "under the hood" (or bonnet for you Brits) Sure it looks great but what is inside. First I'll start with the 3 way switch. This is a CTS style 3 way switch. It works as it should with no loose movements. The cavity is paint shielded. The cover has a metallic tape shield. Next for the pots. They are full size made in Korea Alpha pots. The cavity is also paint shielded. The wiring and solder are very neat. The cavity is clean of any debris. The cover is also shielded as mentioned above.

Next I go to the look of the guitar, as this is the first thing that you see. It looks great the AAAA flamed maple top has a quality look, although, I can't see what the difference is between AAA and AAAA except perhaps marketing. There were no imperfections found anywhere on the guitar.

The guitar itself comes in just over 9 lbs. (over 4 kg.) The guitar is listed as having weight relief, It is not light by any means but is right in the Les Paul weight catagory.

O.K. how does it sound. I love the Tesla pickups. I have guitars with Seymour Duncan pups and they are right up there with them. The pots roll off good for different flavor at different settings.

The neck feels great a true 60's profile, not a baseball bat 50's. The fretwork was perfect and setup was spot on. It's nice to know that I'll probably never have to re-fret the guitar as the frets are stainless steel.

The only thing that I changed were the tuners. They were perfectly adequate, but I prefer locking tuners for ease of string replacement.

All in all I like this much better than my Les Paul Studio, which I am now going to sell. If you want a quality sounding great looking guitar, you can't go wrong with this.