FIREFLY 338 VS. GIBSON 335! Plus review of the Firefly

hey friends raj back with you today and i have a versus video [Music] this will be a gibson 335 real deal mccoy versus this firefly 338 which is a 335 [Music] copy can we call it that we just say what say what it is many thanks to my buddy jordan burchill for loaning me the gibson he is half of an incredible duo called beth james out of austin texas you need to check them out if you haven't i'll put a link in the description below okay hoodie off because it's 37 degrees outside means it needs to be at least 84 degrees inside my house apparently anyway i've taken some measurements of some things so we can compare apples to apples as much as possible here this apple weighs in at just about eight and a half pounds which does make this a little heavier than average i believe i think the average weight for 335 according to the interwebs is just a hair under eight pounds so this guitar weighs in at almost exactly seven pounds which makes it a pound and a half lighter than this 335 which is pretty substantial you can definitely feel the difference when you pick them up you can definitely feel the difference when you have them strapped on i measured the string spacing as well on these instruments and of course this can vary greatly depending on how your nets cut you could get a 13 replacement for uh for your nut and you could ostensibly cut it any way you like but in this case the 335 at the nut the string spacing is 1 and 13 30 seconds inches the 338 firefly spacing at the nut is 1 and 12 30 seconds inches so i did double check that it's very very close but each time i checked it i got a 1 32nd inch difference at the bridge the string spacing is 2 and 1 16 inch to the best of my measuring abilities at the bridge the 338 string spacing is 2 and 1 16 so exactly the same as the gibson which is not surprising because these two pneumatics are more or less direct copies i also took a measurement of the resistance uh using the output jack in the pickup so i didn't take any components out i'm not going to do that to my buddy's guitar that would be very uncool at the jack wide open the neck on the 335 was 7.8 k with tone and volume wide open at the neck i got 11.91 okay the bridge was 7.6 k and the bridge is 11.89 k so we expect these to be a much hotter pickup when we plug in depends on the style of music you play what you what kind of amp you're running through it depends on all of those things but if this guitar is trying to uh mimic a more classic 335 kind of like the one that we have here uh that is right now the biggest difference because uh everything else is fairly right on as far as measurements are concerned i've got the 335 strung up with new strings uh the 338 has two day old strings on it so we're pretty close both tins uh and both excels i believe i'm going to try to do an acoustic test on both of these guitars just to let you hear the difference uh not that you'd be miking these up but i think that it is telling a bit so uh let's try to get this as even as possible [Music] you [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Laughter] [Music] big [Music] [Music] [Music] so [Music] so [Music] [Music] [Music] [Laughter] [Music] [Music] i do want to do a bit of a mini review on this 338 by firefly i got this guitar about a week and a half ago after uh waiting for for quite a while for them to show back up on either amazon or on their own website which is guitarsgarden.com just a quick once over finish is amazing it's a gorgeous guitar i'm sure this is a veneer and that's a big part of what could make it more expensive if it was a full-on spalted maple top with that poly finish it'll probably never make it down to the point where that veneer is any sort of danger i might knock the polly back at some point might uh scruff it up just enough to get some of that shine off with some quad art steel wool however that still leaves plenty of poly the finish is beautiful all around front back you can see all sort of swirl marks in the back of the guitar where i've already knocked that back a bit that shine on that poly i'll go over it a little bit more carefully and get some of the swirl marks out but i do prefer to dull that poly shine a little bit i've been hesitant to do the top of this because it's so gorgeous but we'll see another day perhaps if you haven't seen the video that i did comparing these pickups against some seymour duncan antiquities and some gibsons and an sg that might be worth watching uh it was very unscientific i'll get into a few more specs here in a minute than i did in that but uh i don't really have a problem with these pickups uh i think that they're very usable i don't play with super high gains so i couldn't tell you if they're any more microphonic than those other two but they seem to be pretty solid the tailpiece and the bridge are both chrome plated just like the pickups and although they both function okay some of the individual screws on the bridge were are very tough to move um some were so tough in fact that rather than risk stripping the end of the screw i actually removed the strings and moved them with a pair of needle nose pliers just because i was scared that i might strip them out so that's worth noting i suppose not perfect but i was able to get the guitar in tune and intonated and uh they haven't been a problem since i said that the pickguard is a three-ply it would appear just like some other reviews have said uh it's fairly roughly cut i'll try to get a tight shot of that um the cut is fairly rough but i i do like the shape of the pickguard it's pretty traditional in line with later 50s and 60s pickguards i'm assuming that they're budget dime-sized pots all around uh which are all functioning as they should but historically those pots don't have a great track record if you have this instrument on the road for instance and got some sweat in there every night and that kind of thing however they are working so i'll give them points for that i haven't noticed anything uh funky about the way uh that they taper either the volume or the tone so full points for right now on those uh on those pots so basically everything from here down i'll give it a thumbs up the shape of the neck is very comfortable uh for me personally it's more of a 60s profile it's not that fat i would say that it's not quite as thin as some of the 60s profiles that i've played but it's very comfortable it feels like a modern gibson profile to me the tilt of the headstock is not nearly as dramatic as on a real gibson i'm not really sure what the angle is and i don't have a way to find out but i'd say it's it's probably just over half of the break angle of my sg and we'll compare it visually anyway to the 335 i think it's worth saying that i don't mind the shape of this headstock uh as superficial as that may as that may sound uh you know there's something about the look of a guitar that makes you want to grab it and play it and um between the finish and the general shape of this guitar the ears on this guitar aren't quite the mickey mouse ears i actually like the sharper ears of i think i want to say it was 67 maybe i'll post that there there there they went to a slightly sharper ear and that's happened a couple times throughout the production of 335 it's been around for a very long time and between the 3 35 345 355 and all its different variants um there have been quite a few shapes the binding is really nice throughout as a matter of fact i've only found one real finish flaw at all uh and i'll show a close-up of that obviously you're kind of luck of the draw on some of these chinese manufactured guitars and pretty much that's where the kudos run out for this particular guitar when i got this guitar the frets were in pretty bad shape nothing was lifted out there was no like sprout but we had lots and lots of places where at a decent action i was fretting out and so basically rather than try to fix each individual problem i just decided to do a full fret level so i have done that and i've recrowned and i have polished them up somewhat although i probably need to spend a little bit more time on that but all in all uh it took me you know a couple of hours i'm not all that great at it yet took my time and made sure that i did it as good as i could do it and ended up going back a couple times and fixing a few things that i didn't get quite right the first time so i just went slow and didn't take off too much that way you can always go back and take off more in terms of sharpness of the ends i mean this is bound so none of the fret ends went past the binding but just within the binding sometimes you'll get some sharpness and there was some of that so i've gone through and i've done just a hair of sanding on each side of each fret all the way down and again 45 minutes or so worth of work while watching the tv and that uh that problem was pretty much taken care of the next big issue were the tuners the original tuners that came with this thing uh were pretty bad i would say not the worst i've received on a budget guitar but definitely in the running for the top five worst set of tuners that i've received i can't blame them a good set of name brand tuners could literally cost half as much as this guitar so they have to cut costs somewhere i was able to get the guitar in tune but keeping it there was a little more difficult the gear ratio was probably uh pretty low and it was just tough to make any sort of small adjustments so i started looking around for tuners that i thought would be a good fit for this guitar i didn't want to spend name brand money i didn't think that would be appropriate for the sort of project this was uh and certainly not for this comparison video i didn't want to spend 80 on a set of tuners for a guitar that cost 180 so i ran across a company on amazon called i believe it's geiker i hope that's right let's put that up here how about here yes these locking tuners uh that were still very much vintage and look uh just like klusins and then a lock on them i got them installed and all went great until i got to the a string and when i got to the a string the mechanism that the screw that actually locks the string was uh stripped out just on the end unfortunately i could actually screw it in just fine without the string in there but uh so as i'm recording this they are sending me a replacement you know the the i guess the fringe benefit is if that happens to you you can still use it as a regular tuner i will say that these tuners uh have been great so far they i don't know what the gear ratio is i'm not sure if it's if i can find the spec i'll post it here but uh in terms of the feel in terms of their resistance it's very similar to the gibsons i have on my sg and to the clewsons i have on my custom build so i'll be buying more of these at uh under 40 bucks i think it was a pretty good deal the nut was actually okay on this guitar i am not sure if it was bone or hard plastic if it was hard plastic it was it was a good quality one it passed the tone test whenever i took it off and i dropped it on a wood table it it made a pleasing sound alongside other bone nuts so i don't want to say definitively what it was because it's real there's it's not listed in the specs anywhere but that being said the cut was okay but not perfect it was a little too deep in spots for my liking it wasn't causing any real specific problems but i just didn't uh figure for twelve dollars that it wasn't worth replacing that so this is a tusk nut uh that i have done a little bit of filing to and kind of got it where i feel like is the best balance between action and tuning and general feel so all told between the guitar the shipping for the guitar the nut and the tuners i have spent 250 actually 249 and some change on this guitar 250 united states dollar bills i should also mention that i replaced the truss rod cover this is the one that came with it it was fine uh pretty in ornate so i i grabbed one that was on uh an epiphone that i had and i did have to drill one additional hole so we'll call it 250. i feel like it's playing really well i've gone through helix native and created a few patches that i feel are uh complementary to this guitar and i'm having a lot of fun with it it's staying in tune yeah it's just doing it's doing all the stuff that i wanted to do so at this point let's look at the gibson all right so here we have the real deal mccoy this is gibson 335 it came out of the memphis factory in 2014. actually it came out of the memphis factory in march of 2014 actually it came out of the memphis factory march 6 2014. i know that because it came with this certificate of authenticity a little booklet like it graduated from junior college uh and then on the warranty card it actually has the exact date of manufacturing which was march 6 2014 which is kind of cool neck is mahogany everything else is maple i think it's safe to assume that all of the hardware from the switch to the jack to the pots to the knobs to the tuners all of these things are going to be at a fairly high level of quality uh fairly or above fairly high level or above we have a nickel plated bridge and tail piece and i'm gonna say chrome plated pickups could be wrong on that they might be nickel but if they're nickel they sure are shiny and then uh on the tuner front we have klusins so close and deluxe tuners which is what you'd expect i'm not going to really do a review so much of this guitar a few specs i think are important to make the comparison a little bit more meaningful this is the guitar that any of its copies should be compared against so uh thanks again to jordan for lending it to me so i've got a few thoughts on all of this some subjective some objective uh part of my reason for doing this was to try to define some actual measurable things that we could put up on the screen to say this is why these two guitars feel different um and there are some there are quite a few actually so one would be just the actual construction so the difference in uh wood between at very least the necks um there's something to be said for that there's a different resonance it's definitely going to have an impact on how it feels in the hand how it resonates in the hand how it responds to physically playing a string so there's a difference there between the mahogany neck on this and the maple neck on this the density of the wood is going to be different uh it would probably be different on a maple neck 335 and this maple neck 338 so that's uh a part of it obviously the pickup output oddly wasn't as huge of a deal as i thought it would be i think um coming from mostly telecaster world where you've got where you're dipping down into the 4 000 range maybe that difference uh for for whatever reason maybe you guys are way smarter than me you can explain why uh that difference would be more audible than jumping from 7 000 up to 11 000 thereabouts so uh but that being said you could definitely hear a difference there was definitely a difference in in the tech in the response of the pickup to my picking and i'm sure that i was doing things inadvertently uh to correct that that i didn't mean to do i meant to try to play everything about the same dynamic range but you know you're listening and you're making adjustments so i definitely think those pickups sound sweeter for lack of a more uh particular descriptor uh i think they're probably very close to the duncans i have in my custom those duncans i just looked uh literally cost each pickup cost more than half of what this guitar the set of pickups cost quite a bit more than this guitar as a whole even with my mods so that's a it's tough but we're that's what we're doing we're we're being tough on it um i don't think they sound unusable i think that if 335 isn't my main guitar and it's not my main guitar is tele that i don't see a reason that i would spend you know 2 500 bucks 3 000 bucks or more uh on an instrument just to play parts in the studio or play it occasionally live i think this guitar or an epiphone that's had similar changes and adjustments would probably get me most of the way there in terms of sound now there's some far more subjective things at least i can't uh be as specific about i think that there is something fairly substantial happening in the string tension difference between these two guitars the tilt back on the gibson is quite a bit more uh of an angle than it is on this 338 and then also on this 338 i've adjusted this to be a little bit higher so the brake angle over the bridge is a little bit lower doing that kind of anticipating that i would like the more slinky string feel and between the lesser angle of the headstock and lesser angle here that's what i got interestingly playing them back to back and having the uh having the stop piece on the 335b all the way down and action almost the exact same on both guitars at the 12th fret between uh that break angle and the breaking on the headstock of the gibson i found it much more consistent to play that guitar i i felt like i played that guitar better than i played this guitar in practice so i may very well um screw this down all the way to the uh you know to as far as down as it'll go to give me a little bit more of a break angle but then that's it for me i can't really the the neck is fairly straight right now i can't really take out any relief to give me uh a straighter feel uh these are i think the gibson's maybe a hair straighter this is probably about as straight as i can go uh with the current fret chop that i did myself so i'm sure this fret job is better than the fret job that i did but it's this one's decent so there's definitely a limit there about uh in terms of just feel and like string response and that uh whether you like it slinky you're like a tight i felt i played the 335 more consistently than i did this guy there's also something to be said about the finish uh not having any of this sticky poly just the way it feels everywhere the way it feels in my left hand you know i've i've like i said i roughed up the poly on the back and the neck a bit but it still feels um a little different you know there's still there's still a tactile difference between those two finishes and i think uh that plays part i don't think it's as big of a deal as the mahogany neck versus the maple neck these necks are about the same width depth from face of the fretboard to the back of the neck the gibson might be a hair a hair bigger possibly i don't i don't know uh it's if it is it's just a just a very small amount so i don't think that really contributes to it the frets are about the same size maybe a hair bigger on 338 a hair wider but obviously where the strings touching is not going to be that big of a difference it's interesting how these small things start to add up and feel that much different but um anyway that's where we stand it's it's it's it's kind of bittersweet uh i i'm about where i thought i would be where this guitar uh definitely handles the bill in the studio definitely would handle the bill live with the mods that i've made i think it'll hold tune and and be a solid guitar but i think that there's a limit uh in just how close i could get this thing no matter how much money i wanted to throw at it to a 335 i think that if i put the duncans or some real gibson pickups on here and doubled the cost of this guitar i would still only be about 500 bucks and 500 is a lot less than 2500 so if i re if it was critical that i get that tone if i wanted if i needed that larry carlton sound or something like that then i think that would be worth the investment on the guitar that was initially this cheap but obviously you have to do the work or you have to have someone do the work so that could be 100 200 so you could easily get this guitar you could spend 700 buying this guitar for 180 plus shipping uh upgrading the tuners which i feel like if you're a serious player you have to do um the nut doing the fret work either yourself or have or paying someone to do it and then eventually possibly switching out the pickups are these things necessary to play the guitar not necessarily it's not necessarily necessary there have been a couple other reviews that got the guitar out of the box tuned it up and it played amazingly uh some great reviews a couple of fantastic players that have reviewed this guitar and say there's nothing at all wrong with it that it played great uh mine wasn't that way but maybe yours will be it depends on whether you think you can take that risk or not or you don't mind sending it back making sure that you get that if you purchase it from amazon that you've got a return but uh yeah it's uh it's a very interesting and very subjective thing to play these two guitars back to back and once again thanks to jordan virgil for for lending me this guitar um we'll we'll see if you get it back man sorry in advance all alright happy playing guys [Music] do [Music] so [Music] so [Music] so [Music] [Music] foreign [Music] [Music] so [Music] do [Music] oh [Music] [Applause] [Music] foreign [Music] do [Music] [Music] mmm [Music]

Channel: MusicNerdStuff

Views: 112,680

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Id: KDeeJ3WsYvk

Length: 33min 3sec (1983 seconds)

Published: Wed Oct 28 2020