It shipped on Monday afternoon, and was delivered to my door Wednesday at 10:06 a.m. local time.
My first impression was not the best. The strings had been wound around the post with the winds beneath the strings rather than above them, and each string had only a wind or two before it was snipped of. I didn't notice it at first though, since there was a significant fret buzz starting around the the tenth fret. The saddles had been lowered significantly to get a very low action, but I'd rather have just a moderately low action without any buzz, than really low action with buzz. Having adjusted that, I re-tuned and played a bit, but it didn't feel right. I play 10-52s, and these looked to be 9s, so tonally it sounded a bit anemic - but there was something else, ah... that's when I noticed the strings were wound up, rather than down, and they had precious few winds around them. I was concerned at first that the tuners might be bad, since they didn't seem to stay in tune for long - but once I flipped the wind, it got a whole lot better.
The pickups are set so that the bridge pickup is noticeably quieter than the neck, and anemic sounding. I'm going to set it up when I have some time. The knobs will need to be replaced as the chrome is lifting off them, and the nut will need some TLC to accommodate the 52s I plan on stringing up with when I do the setup.
Over all I am quite satisfied with the guitar. She is certainly light, in fact I didn't realize how light until I lifted both the Tribute Special and the semi-hollow special, one in each arm. Suddenly the Tribute feels like a heavy beast!
Near future purchases: A strap, some locking strap buttons, new chrome knobs - and maybe some locking tuners. I'm not a fan of slotted tuners, and these aren't as snug and creamy feeling as I like.
How does the American Semi Hollow compare to it's non semi-hollow Tribute counterpart?Tone-wise: it's a wee bit brighter, maybe more than a wee bit, and that brightness isn't all in the treble range - the bass notes come through with a bit more articulation, so that while it sounds just as bassy, it loses some of the mud. I'm over stating it here, but I don't know any other way to describe it.
Build/quality wise: About the same really. I mean, some of the components are better on the American one - but the actual build quality - the wood, the cut of the guitar, the finish the neck - all these are comparable. If I was forced to choose the better build quality, I'd be hard pressed to say. The Indonesian one seems better on all points, but it's less than a year old, and it's being compared to a guitar built 14 or 15 years ago. So while it seems to win the build quality trophy - it isn't really a fair comparison. The bottom line there is, if you buy a Tribute model, you're still buying a
great guitar.
Next up, the promised picsHere is a picture of her alongside some of the herd
Here she is alongside her Asian brother (left). You can't tell from the photo but her blueburst has aged a bit into a slightly greenish hue when viewed head on.
For anyone wondering about the other guitars, I keep all my allen keys (at least the guitar ones) together in an Altoids tin in one of my cases. They move around enough that I wasn't sure which one, and so when I lifted the saddles to get rid of the buzz, I ended up opening three or four cases before I found it, and having a few guitars out, I decided to snap some shots of all of them together, so I got the rest of my "main" guitars out and lined 'em up for some photos.
From left to right (Back row) Heritage 157 CM, Koa Top Fender Select Telecaster, Tribute Comanche
From left to right (Front row) Tribute ASAT Special, Fender strat plus, ASAT Special Semi Hollow