GROTE Guitar Solid Body Electric Guitar with Gigbag LPYS-006 (Purple)

Been playing guitar for over 30 years. I have owned every brand, just about. I have Gibson Les Pauls currently, but I don’t like taking them out of my home to teach lessons or gig for many reasons. I decided to try these because I love the feel and sound of a Les Paul and the other reviews left made me feel comfortable to give these a try with the price point. Here’s my HONEST review, I’m not a shrew for Grote or the Chinese government.Packing: initial thought was no way this guitar is intact. I’m used to more protective packaging, but the guitar came in a gig bag and was not broken.Out of the box: Finish was beautiful!! No scratches, cracks, cloudy areas….nothing. No sprouting frets or any sharpness. Neck felt perfect and fast. Strings were loose but not completely slacked, just enough tension.Initial playing: tuned guitar to E standard, tuners were not as tight with the turns, but I’m also picky about that. Tuned up and it stayed in tune. Checked intonation and it was spot on, which shocked me. Others have said they had buzzing initially, I had none. I had already ordered a replacement nut because of those comments and now it won’t be needed. All 3 pickup positions worked perfectly and as they should. Tried out the guitar for 10 minutes of heavy riffing and wood shedding with aggressive bends and what not. After that 10 minutes, the guitar was only ever slightly out of tune, no different than any of my American made Gibsons, Fenders, or Paul Reed Smiths would be.Final INITIAL analysis: for this price point, this is a steal. Feels and plays WAY better than any Epiphone I have ever owned. I’m going to give their ES-335 copy a try next and I’ll probably pick one or two more of these. I’ll be using these for my teaching lessons and gigging from now on.

I love these Grote guitars. The value is hard to beat, for sure. However, the best part for me is these are truly nice guitars.The finish is beautiful. The electronics just work. The pickups sound great. The neck is comfortable. The frets are nicely finished (smooth and polished surfaces, no sharp edges). The tuning machines are stable. The inlays are attractive and smooth.I've been playing guitar on and off for 30+ years. I'm thrilled, absolutely thrilled, to have these guitars.I bought the blue ES-335 first. I was so impressed I bought the purple Les Paul as soon as they were in stock.They are playable out of the box (after tuning, of course). They come with decent enough 10's already installed. The strings have D'Addario color coded ball ends, but I'm not convinced they are actual D'Addarios. The dye color isn't quite right. Regardless, they are serviceable strings.The action comes a little high for my preference. The neck had too much relief by the time it got to me. A simple careful truss rod adjustment was all it took. Intonation was pretty close, too.I figure they leave the factory with high action in order to allow for wood movement and have it still be playable between the plant in China and whenever/wherever it gets to the customer.Just think, it was built in China a few months ago (with nice materials and great attention to detail - not a gripe, just an observation about location). It gets packaged, makes an ocean voyage on a container ship, arrives on US shores, makes its way to a seller by train/truck, and then gets shipped to me via Amazon (planes and trucks).The guitar experienced lots of temperature and humidity situations and it _still_ arrives payable. It's well packaged in a heavy cardboard box inside its gig bag, surrounded by a reasonable amount of styrofoam.If you know how to do a basic setup - neck relief, bridge height, intonation - you can dial in a nicely shredable 4/64ths on the base and .005 neck relief at the 7th, though normal temperature/humidity fluctuations will mean you're chasing that a lot.Set it up with 6/64ths on the bass and maybe .008 neck relief and you can probably let out sit on a stand all year without fret buzz and without any notes fretting out due to low action.The blue 335 has what I believe to be a graphic of flame maple. The grain is just a bit too big, more like a tiger stripe, and it doesn't look quite right up close. From 10 feet away, though, it's fine.The purple LP, well, it's hard to tell. Maybe it's a graphic. Maybe it's a maple top. I can't tell up close, and I definitely can't tell from a few feet away. Which means it's pretty ducking nice.The Amazon product description for the LP indicate "single coil" pickups, which is incorrect. They are definitely humbuckers (which is what I wanted anyway). My LP does _not_ have coil split push/pull pots, but my 335 does. I believe Grote sells a different LP model _with_ coil splits.All things considered, I'd buy them again. I'll probably buy more in the future.

Very nice guitar, great workmanship and paint job including round fret ends which will not shred your hands. BUT as soon as you get it you will need to do a full set up because it has lots of fret buzz so check the frets with a fret rocker before you mess around with the truss rod, which may need to adjust because the string action seem very low . Some small entonation adjustment no big deal, polish the frets well so you won’t hear that grinding noise during your solos and please put some decent strings preferably #10’s I use Elixir they are more expensive but they last much longer and like the tone. Other than these, guitar is great but for the price.