#Levinson guitars update#
#Levinson guitars series#

The bridge is also ebony and sports a compensated bone saddle. Binding for the head and neck is a striped Ivoroid. The fingerboard is ebony with abalone fret markers and a bone nut. The compact headstock has Levinson’s ‘Flying Fish” logo set into an ebony headplate with butter bean vintage-style machine heads. The neck is a solid piece of mahogany with a modern, low profile C shape and feels very comfortable indeed. The LS-43 is one of four guitars in the Sangamon range, which are a deep-bodied concert shape with a narrow waist and slightly shorter scale length at 24 ¾”. Small amounts were hand-made from his workshop in Basel in Switzerland to fund his studies at university there in the late '70s prior to the success of the electric guitars, and those 40 years of designs and techniques are implemented here in the current collection. Although this acoustic range is relatively new, it has actually been over 40 years in the making, with Gary building and repairing acoustic guitars since the mid '60s and early '70s in his native Illinois. But generally a pretty nice condition for a 30-35-year-old player's guitar.The Levinson LS-43 Sangamon is one of a range of acoustic guitars from Gary Levinson, the American designer behind the Blade electric guitar company and the iconic RH-4 Superstrat from the late '80s. As far as the cosmetics go it has been played quite a bit and so there are a few dings here and there, along with some scratches and scuffs. The nitrocellulose paint job is beautiful. The color is deep translucent burgundy wine or black cherry (Red See-thru), with a little lighter color in the middle. Straight strat to crunch to searing lead. It's like having channel switching with your pinky finger. Then depending on where you set your potentiometers, you can switch and it will kick your amp into a very overdriven mode.

So why all these electronics? Set your tube amp clean right under where it would break up and when you turn the mid boost it will push the amp into a nice breakup distortion, great for rock rhythm, blues, lead.

This is called the Variable Sound Control Preamp System. There is a 3-way mini toggle on the front of the guitar in addition to the five-way pickup selector. On the back, there is a black cover over a three potentiometer preamp. This is definitely a rare Blade and is one of the earlier post lawsuit neck ones I was told. It features the incredible Falcon tremolo, which when set up properly, allows dives and pullbacks without the hassle of a double locking tremolo system. It has an ebony fretboard on a rock maple neck and Sperzel tuners. I’m a pickup junkie and never thought about replacing them, but it’s real easy to do in this guitar and any passive pickup will work just fine with the onboard pre-amp. Later models came with a humbucker bridge pickup (the RH4).

#Levinson guitars series#

Rare early series Blade R4 Classic with 3 hum-cancelling single-coil pickups.

#Levinson guitars update#

Update - I found a paper that describes how the standard VSC works - see last photos. Some dents and superficial buckle rash, but overall in excellent and original condition.Ĭomes with a non-original soft shell case. Vintage 1988 Post Lawsuit Blade R4 in unique Black Cherry finish (or as they call it (See Thru Red)Īmazing Sen-Ash body, Rock-Maple neck, Ebony fingerboard