Casino VS : Wonderful Guitar - Superb Quality for the Money!

I admit I was skeptical, and didn't expect the guitar to be so good at that price point. No, it's not cheap, but has an affordable price for most musicians. I have been repeatedly surprised by the quality of Asian imports, and this was no exception.

I found no flaws in the finish, fret work, or binding - all excellent. After a very thorough inspection I was awed by the quality of the workmanship. Intonation was good out of the box; I only needed to adjust the bridge height (easy) and the intonation on the G-string. Neck is straight with a slight bit of relief.

Plays and sounds very good. Very comfortable neck, with a nice, chunky 60's vibe; P-90's sound great tho I had hoped for a bit more brightness. The pickups can't be raised or lowered, as is normal with most P-90 guitars, but you can raise the individual screws, which I did on the bridge PU. It seemed to have a little less gain than the neck PU. P-90's like to be close to the strings. The nut slotting is shallow, so there's room for more slotting, and I'd advise adding some graphite to the slots, as they do grab a bit, and stretching strings may hang and put the guitar out of tune.

Tuners are fine. They do the job. No quality issues here.

Body size is wonderful, at least for me. Many retailers describe this as a Gibson 335 size body, which isn't completely accurate; it's actually a Gibson 330 style body. The 335 is a semi-hollow body - it has a solid piece of wood that runs from the neck to the tail under the top - and the 330 was a completely hollow body, as was the Casino.

The American made, Gibson, Casinos, made in Nashville, cost about 4 times as much. Most of what you're paying for is US union labor. That's the real advantage of Asian imports; you're not paying stupid money per hour for the labor, and the factories in Asia are state-of-the-art. Aside from that, tho the Gibson version has the correct dark back, as did the Casinos in the early to mid 60's, they missed it on the fret markers, which the Asian imports got right; they slope down in the original version, not up, as the Nashville instruments do. And I like having the sunburst on the back as well as the front, as the Asian imports have. Looks great! and the grain is very nice.

I also would note that I was originally interested in the blonde version, but they were way oversold. So I grabbed a vintage sunburst, and I'm glad I did. Very beautiful, and what most guitarists don't seem to realize is that a blonde finish wasn't available in the 60's. I guess the Get Back film inspired a lot of players, but all of the guitarists in the Beatles, starting with Paul, who bought the first Casino of the band, bought sunbursts. Lennon had the finish stripped, as Donovan had told him it would sound better. Ah, and removing the pick-guard is easy, if you want that Lennon look.

This is a really fine instrument, beautifully crafted, with a very unusual sound and feel. I always wondered why the Beatles picked the Casino. Now I understand.