How are the empress Legacy guitars holding up?

[dtp]

I have an opportunity to make a trade for a 2017 (or is it a 2016) Legacy with a brown-burst Empress body and some cash for one of my now-unused PRS guitars. The current owner of the Legacy is paranoid that he will scratch any new expensive instrument he owns so he wants to get rid of it. It is in pristine condition and my current collection has a strat-shaped hole in it.

I am however concerned about the durability of empress/paulowina bodies, especially when a tremolo bridge is part of the guitar. This guitar will be a "working guitar" and while I am not careless with my instruments, accidents are inevitable when they are used on-stage as much as I perform. I have heard horror stories of bridge screws coming out and other smaller screws not holding their threads very well and quite a few people saying an empress/paulowina body is not suited for heavy use at all and won't last the test of time.

One remedy I have read about for the trem-bridge issue is to either glue hardwood dowels in the body to accept the screws or going so far as to putting an entire hardwood block where the trem goes.

Does G&L do anything like this? I'd be curious to know the experiences of other empress users here.

FWIW, I love G&L guitars and my "strat hole" is likely to be filled by one eventually regardless the outcome of this thread. I currently own a nice candy-apple red ASAT Classic Tribute Series that gets lots of love!

[Fumble fingers]

My Empress ASAT is holding up fine , I've all but gigged it and will soon , it's been to many practices and gets played a lot at home , no problems and no issues with the body wood , I will get Empress on my next G&L

[dtp]

Thanks for that. From what I've been reading, fixed-bridge guitars seems to be holding up OK. It's when a trem comes into play that people are seeing issues.

[Nedmundo]

I have an empress Comanche from late 2015. I'm mostly a bass player, so it hasn't seen any stage action, and I don't use the trem much. So I can't provide much guidance, except that when I removed the pickguard recently, I found two of the screw holes completely stripped out. I was surprised by this, but I've since learned empress is soft like basswood, and I've experienced stripped strap button holes on a basswood Ibanez bass as well. Then again, my Fender Jazz also has a stripped strap button hole, so I guess it happens with alder.

FWIW, I haven't read about any problems with empress G&L basses, which are quite popular due to the weight savings. Most players seem to love theirs, and I'm contemplating an empress build (or two). Maybe a "best of both worlds" approach would be an alder or ash center block for a more solid bridge attachment, with empress "wings" for some weight savings. That would make sense to me on an S-type guitar.