eldegas.com

Hi Folks,

I bought this guitar and an old cheap amp for $200 (Canadian) many years ago. I started playing guitar again for fun a few months ago and decided to get the dust off the El-Degas. Here are some pictures. I will take a pic of the rear with the serial number this evening. I replaced (but kept!) the stock pickups with Stewmac's Golden Age Parsons Street pickups. The bridge sounds great but the neck was a little muddy. I lowered the neck side of the pickups and use an EQ pedal to remove a little of the mids. Sounds great now! It's a heavy guitar (which I actually prefer) but picking is a little more challenging for me (beginner!) because of the middle pickup. The 3 gold pickups look so sweeeeet though.

These pictures were taken before I replaced the pickups so they have the original scrubbed gold covers.

Hmm I took a look at the back of the guitar and did not see any serial numbers. Anyway here are pics with the new pickups and one of the rear.





I still have the clear protective stickers on the pickups in the images.

Emmsys

You do not often find a serial number on the electric models, but regardless the serial numbering system used on El Degas guitars has long been lost to time so they do not give us any info on the guitars anyway!

Nice looking guitar! I've never owned one of the 3-humbucker Les Pauls... I figure I have my hands full with two pickups so I don't need to add a third

Thanks for sharing!

Cool thanks for the info! How would I know what type of wood that the guitar (body, top and neck) is made of? After reading up a little there's a good chance that it is mahogany but I wouldn't know how to tell from just looking at it. Thanks!

E

It does seem like most of the MIJ (Made in Japan) models tended to use the same body wood types as the guitars they were emulating, so that should make this guitar have mahogany in both the body and neck (there's no maple cap on a Les Paul Black Beauty like you would find on a Les Paul Standard).

If you want to confirm the wood types, you could always take a look where you'll find unfinished wood (inside the body cavity; under the pickups; in the neck pocket and on the unfinished end of the bolt on neck) and look for the tell-tale grain pattern of mahogany; but my bet would be on everything being mahogany throughout.