GROTE Jazz Electric Guitar Hollow Body Chrome Hardware P90 pickup (RED)

This was an impulse buy. A friend of mine purchased one of these and said that it was a lot of guitar for the money. I always wanted a hollowbody one pickup guitar, and this fit the bill.The good: It feels solidly constructed. The finish is quite good at this price level. It was playable out of the box, but still needed some work. It has "good bones" as my friend put it. It has a nice volume unamplified, and I do like the thin body.Is it perfect? No, it is not. It needs some work. The bridge had to be reworked a bit on the bottom as it didn't have full contact. The nut was cut a bit high, and I had to adjust that. The frets are pretty grainy, but that's easy to fix. The fret height and the fret ends were fine though. The tuners are absolutely awful. I mean, really awful. Some slipped as much as half a turn before they would catch. I replaced them with some inexpensive Gotah tuners and it is a huge improvement.I didn't like the pickup - but it is a P-90 and it is a single coil so it is really prone to noise. It also was set up pretty far away from the strings. If you like P-90 pickups, you will probably be okay with it. I thought it would be easy to get a noiseless or humbucker pickup to fit, but since it is a dogear pickup, I had limited choices and all were a bit spendy. I ended up getting a Mojotone silent P-90, which sounds amazing, but it was 129.00. I also put in a spacer underneath the pickup to bring it closer to the strings.All in all, I am very happy with the guitar. I've played out with it and it performed well after the upgrades. If you like the pickup that is in it, all you will probably need to buy are good tuners and a little work to make it fully playable. This guitar performs miles above its price point.

Twangy (high hz side). Good for a slide. I Made some mods.Think blurgrass or country….she’s alright.

Great feel , great sound. Did need new strings .For the money you can't go wrong

My dream guitar model is a Gibson ES125. That’s basically what this guitar is modeled after. At more than 2 grand cheaper, this guitar is about as close as you can get to the sound of those 60s Gibsons imho. I played a Godin 5th avenue for 10 years and hundreds of performances and I believe this Grote jazz hollow body to be a better guitar than the Godins. The guitar wasn’t perfect out of the box but after a couple turns of the truss rod and slight bridge adjustment it plays perfectly with perfect intonation up and down the neck. The sustain and tone you can get from this guitar is incredible given the price. It plays, looks, and feels like guitars that cost 5x as much. The only thing that feels a little cheap on the guitar is the tuners, so I’ll probably replace those eventually but it does seem to hold tune pretty well. I thought I’d just play this guitar around the house and for practice but after playing it for a few weeks, I’d have no quarrels about using this guitar on stage. It’s that good. Great job, Grote. I will definitely be trying out some of their other styles in the future given how happy I am with this guitar.

This guitar is not perfect. It needs work. Over the last sixteen years I have bought nine guitars and four ukuleles. ALL OF THEM needed work. Most were returned or sold. This one needs work too. The neck needed an adjustment. So I turned the truss rod a little with the included wrench.The nut needs to be cut deeper. I've got nut files.The intonation isn't perfect. Since it has a floating bridge (not solidly attached) AND adjustable saddles, fixing that was easy.The tuners look great. Some of them slip a little. I have locking tuners ready to be installed the next time the strings are changed. The big butter bean knobs look good and can be removed. I hope they fit the locking tuner set. Otherwise the tulip design will remain.The finish has some nearly invisible scratches on the neck that can be felt; and some polish was stuck in a really tiny spot along the neck joint. Some paint was missing in that spot. That is why the polish filled in that crack.The pick guard isn't smooth on the edge. Some sandpaper can fix that if i even bother.The frets don't poke out. The frets need to be leveled. It doesn't seem to have any egregiously high frets. I have a leveling beam and fret crowning tools. The frets will be fixed when the strings are changed.The acoustic sound is great. I don't need to plug in when practicing. The strings ring a long time.The P90 pickup is unique. I've heard many. This one has plenty of highs. So much in fact, that with the tone knob turned to maximum, it sounds almost the same plugged in as unamplified. I love the tone. Grote should sell these pickups alone.The volume and tone knobs work smoothly without noise.I love the red color. The clear coat over the red makes it look awesome. Just as good as a red Gibson 335.The Crossrock CRW620SABK hard shell case sold on Amazon fits this guitar. The lower bout fits properly. The upper bout doesn't touch the sides.This guitar is modeled after a Gibson ES 125T. Look it up. The Epiphone Century 1966 looks the same. The scale length of this Grote is 25.5 inches NOT 24.75 inches as described above. The original ES 125T also had a 25.5 inch scale length. The bottom bout is also 1/4 inch wider than the ES 125T.This Grote Jazz Hollow Body guitar will be kept forever. I love the tone and the look. The trapeze tail piece contributes to the great sound. Anybody who likes this style guitar should get one. Even if you don't know how to do the work it needs, pay another $100-$200 to get it done. It will still be worth it in the long run.