Burny, Orville, Greco Les Pauls...experiences?

[Chris O]

You guys that have had some of these - tell me what you think from a quality & sound standpoint. Are they a good value when compared to their "Big Brother" counterparts?

I have had Gibsons. They're great, but if I can get by for 30% of the price, it just makes sense, ya know?

 

[Digital Jams]

They all played awesome and sounded awesome....................right up to the point where I saw the headstock and then I realized they were never going to sound like a real gibson.

 

[Chris O]

Lol...just as I suspected.

 

[duesentrieb]

I have one Gibson ('76 LPC), three ObGs (57 Cst RI, 57 GT RI and one non-RI lemondrop), an Edwards (Sykes-ish model) and a japanese Epiphone (LPC90 - like a 57 RI, made by FujiGen, who also made Orvilles, Orville by Gibson and now FGN).

The "better" Tokais and ObGs are easily comparable with what the Gibson Custom (!) Shop is building nowadays, while the normal FujiGen and ESP-Edwards stuff is comparable to the average Gibson.

When buying a new Edwards you will be surprised that the craftsmanship is even better than standard Gibson quality. The pickups used are different though, Duncans normally . . .

I have no experience with Grecos and Burnys (Fernandes) except playing some of them here and there. The Greco Super-Real LPs are awesome (and very expensive), in the same range as the higher Tokai models. Burnys (their customs have no ebony board) are cool too, but not on the high level of ObG and Tokai >100.

Super cool IMO are those japanese Epiphones (same headstock as Gibsons), they are super well made and because of their branding not as expensive as the other brands. Esp. LPC90 and LPS 90 are awesome and you can get them for 700-800 Dollars, but they are super rare in europe and the US and very hard to find even in Japan.

 

[Ayrton]

Burny, Greco, Edwards, all quality Les Paul copies.

The Orville, and Orville by Gibson were built in Japan for Gibson. I have the Orville, and other than the poly finish, I can't see any difference between it and my other Les Pauls.

 

[alainarose]

I had both the Orville and the Burny Les Pauls. The Orville was a flame top and was awesome. I landed a Burny w/floyd rose and sustainer pickup a few years back and that was more my style as I like Floyd's.

The feel, fit, action, tone and setup on both of these were awesome. Like others have said, if you can get past the headstock not saying "Gibson" then these are awesome guitars.

The Burny w/Floyd is definitely in my stable of guitars for life!

Robert

 

[lordriffenstein]

I have to concur with Dr Olaf, they all make stellar guitars and if you can find an older one say late 70s, early 80s for a good price, you're getting a guitar like Gibson can only WISH to build.

I hunted for the right LP for well over a year, playing pretty much every Gibson I could get my hands on. A couple of friends own some old Tokais, Grecos and Burny's and they all were WAY beyond anything Gibson is making these days. I bought a Tokai without even playing it from a respected dealer in Japanes guitars and that's THE one. It's a 1980 Tokai LS-80, not even the top of the range model and paid about the same as a Gibby LP Studio. I swapped the pickups (slightly microphonic) for some BKP and I'll put that guitar up against the best CS Gibby you can find.

I also own a 2003 Tokai ES-120 (ES-335 model) and that is also an amazing sounding and playing guitar.

 

[lordriffenstein]

They all played awesome and sounded awesome....................right up to the point where I saw the headstock and then I realized they were never going to sound like a real gibson.

Stupid noob!

 

[Digital Jams]

They all played awesome and sounded awesome....................right up to the point where I saw the headstock and then I realized they were never going to sound like a real gibson.

Stupid noob!

You know me way better than this Yoeri

My best LP is a Hamer

 

[duesentrieb]

lol

I still have GAS for a Gibson '68 Custom Authentic, but 3000 Euros is stupid.

 

[lordriffenstein]

They all played awesome and sounded awesome....................right up to the point where I saw the headstock and then I realized they were never going to sound like a real gibson.

Stupid noob!

You know me way better than this Yoeri

My best LP is a Hamer

LOL, Hamer and Heritage are 2 other great alternatives for crappy Gibsons.

 

[lordriffenstein]

lol

I still have GAS for a Gibson '68 Custom Authentic, but 3000 Euros is stupid.

Having GAS is nothing, try finding a GOOD ONE

 

[duesentrieb]

True dat, Yoeri.

 

[charveldan]

Burny, Greco, Edwards, all quality Les Paul copies.

The Orville, and Orville by Gibson were built in Japan for Gibson. I have the Orville, and other than the poly finish, I can't see any difference between it and my other Les Pauls.

My 94' FujiGen Orville LPC Black Beauty is every bit as good as my Gibson USA, it has a long neck tenon and i put Custom Shop Seymours SH-5 & 59' with gold covers, the stock pups wern't that great.

 

[chumbucket]

All of these Japanese axes from the FujiGenGakki factory can easily hang with a regular production Gibson and are probably more consistent. Change the pickups and you're up and running. The Japanese Epiphones came after the Orville's I believe in the late 90's-early 00's? and are the same axes with different name on the headstock.
I think the newer Burny's are Chinese.

 

[joepete77]

I have owned a few orvilles and other jap guitars from that era and still have an orville lp custom ri and a orville lp standard ri. They are 80 to 90% the way there close to the real deal. Minor things like the frett edge binding and the fact that the lp customs have rosewood instead of ebony boards(except the one I had). ALso, poly finish, and many orvilles had 2 piece backs while gibsons had 1 pc up untill 04. I think that they are killer guitars for the money though and I doubt anyone could hear a differance in a blind tone test. I may be listing a Orville lp in vintage burst soon that has a gibson headstock overlay installed by previous owner yrs ago for some reason but still looks cool as hell. I will say that the quality is same as if not better then many recent standard production lp's these days , past few yrs.

 

[Chris O]

I'm checking out an Orville LPC tomorrow. Again, for the money, I'm willing to make a bit of a compromise. The one I'm looking at has USA p'ups too, so that's a plus.

We'll see... He's even interested in my Shiva (not bonding with it at all... ), so I'm hoping that if it flies, I might even walk away with some money in my pocket!

LP GAS has really got me right now. After I scratch that itch...TELE!

 

[duesentrieb]

I have owned a few orvilles and other jap guitars from that era and still have an orville lp custom ri and a orville lp standard ri. They are 80 to 90% the way there close to the real deal. Minor things like the frett edge binding and the fact that the lp customs have rosewood instead of ebony boards(except the one I had). ALso, poly finish, and many orvilles had 2 piece backs while gibsons had 1 pc up untill 04. I think that they are killer guitars for the money though and I doubt anyone could hear a differance in a blind tone test. I may be listing a Orville lp in vintage burst soon that has a gibson headstock overlay installed by previous owner yrs ago for some reason but still looks cool as hell. I will say that the quality is same as if not better then many recent standard production lp's these days , past few yrs.

ObG Reissues have fret edge binding, nitro, long tenon, Gibson Pickups (Classics or those Bill Lawrence made for Gibson for a while), and often US hardware (Gibson/Klusons) - and the RI customs have ebony boards. The inlays except the logo and the split diamond in cst are plastic though.

ObG '57 Cst RI:

ObG GT RI

 

[duesentrieb]

some pics of Greco Super Reals and Tokais (>100) and Epi LPC90s:

(not mine)

and my customs:

left to right:
Edwards JS, Epi LPC90, ObG '57 Cst RI, '76 LPC Gibson

 

[Loudness250]

I have had a few law suit type LP's. My Japanese Bacchus "live road", Goldtop was probably the best. I sold it "stupidly" for 500$ a couple years ago, these are fetching good money now. Now I have an Epiphone 89' custom LP. this was made in Korea maybe the first year Epiphone made LP's. It's referred to as the open book headstock which only lasted a year or 2. It's not as sought after as the Japanese one with the exact headstock. These guitars are very good however and I am actually having mine refretted this week and Can't wait to get it back with good quality frets on it. In my opinion you can find good ones that are Korean too but you have to look at some websites that talk about which factories were good and so on. I did research on mine and found that it is one of the good ones and I bought mine off of a friend who doesn't really play guitar for 250$ so I am way ahead on that deal. All of these brands are still generally a much better deal then the Gibsons but not as much as it used to be, but yeah, you can find a good deal still.