The fretboard end on a Broadway is flat, and I wasn't about to try to re-shape it into the L-5's curved bracket shape. The only remaining thing that I could actually change was the pickguard. More definition, more crispness, but no loss of that fat, warm mellow tone I loved. Sometime later, I found a high quality Japanese L5 style tailpiece on eBay (probably from one of the Matsumoku models), along with a gold Tune-O-Matic bridge, and when I installed them, the tone of the guitar got even better. Something about it being "too decadent." He wanted me to order a much cheaper (but ordinary) tailpiece of the sort he used on his custom guitar builds. An L-5 style tailpiece for around a hundred bucks. I made a trip to Subway Guitars in Berkeley and told the owner (the legendary Fatdog) what I was looking for, and he pulled out a catalog, and there it was. The tailpiece was my main priority, but they rarely showed up online, and were often pricey. First up was replacing the black pickup selector with a white one, then the black-and-chrome knobs with gold bell knobs. It was gorgeous, played beautifully, and I decided it was a keeper, but that I had to give it a proper makeover. It arrived in a hardshell case that actually had "L5" written on it, which I figure was done in a store's stockroom for easy identification, but I took it as a good omen. Eventually I found a used 1997 Peerless-made sunburst Broadway on eBay for $500 and snagged it. Certainly close enough to satisfy my ears. To my astonishment, in my hands they sounded damn close. I had an opportunity to try a few in local stores, and was even able to play one next to a real L-5 in one store. The main aesthetic drawback for me was the Frequensator tailpiece, which I found both homely and inconvenient, as many strings weren't long enough for the reach from the short tailpiece to the "D" tuner. The one that captured my fancy, though was the Epiphone Broadway, which had the most pleasing proportions to my eye. There were a number of affordable big-bodied jazzboxes available - the Samick Greg Bennet LaSalle in several pickup configurations, Washburn, and older models from Matsumoku - Lyle, Ventura, etc.
#Matsumoku lyle guitars plus
Something about the proportions, contours, appointments (not to mention the tone!!) was just RIGHT, and it became my "Holy Grail" guitar.īut with a list price in the stratosphere, and even used ones going for WAYYYYY over my budget, plus the fact that my guitar skills were still nowhere close to justifying such an expensive instrument, I figured it would always be out of reach.įast forward to the early 2000's, when I started getting back into guitar playing and had enough income to indulge my guitar habit a bit.
Both its Venetian (rounded) and Florentine (pointed) cutaway versions seemed to possess mystical properties of aesthetic beauty. Later I sold the ES-125 and got a blonde ES-175 that satisfied my tonal cravings at the time.Īs I got more into jazz (Wes Montgomery, Kenny Burrell, Larry Coryell, et al), I found myself lusting after the mighty Gibson L-5 CES. My first electric was a similar ES-125 from 1969 or so, with a cherry sunburst top and walnut-stained back and sides. In high school, there were two guys who I played with frequently - one had his father's Gibson ES-5 (blonde with three P-90's), the other had a Gibson ES-125 (deep body, no cutaway, one P-90). From the time I first heard Moby Grape and the Sons of Champlin, there was something compelling about that sound, whether played clean and mellow or pushing into overdrive. I've commented here previously on my love affair with big hollow body guitars.