Review of Eastwood Ultra GP guitar
The Eastwood Ultra is a tribute guitar (Replica? Copy? Whatever) of the Ovation Ultra made in the mid 80’s. It was made to compete with the Les Paul (sound familiar?). It sold for about the same as the Paul and made in limited numbers, so it basically didn’t have a shot. This new Eastwood guitar is made in Korea and consistent with the quality that we have come to expect from Korea, not as good as Japan better then China.
Eastwood guitars known for their obscure copies of odd ball guitars that are usually better then the originals thought it a good idea to remake this guitar. IMHO it was a good idea, as this guitars is a very good useful guitar.
The flame maple top is very “flamey” and well matched. The mahogany body is a two piece body, not the best matched mahogany I have seen but straight grained and correctly dense for this kind of guitar. The pickups are copies of the original DeMarzio Super 2N’s that came on this guitar and they sound very good. The knobs are Gibson clone speed knobs and the bridge /tailpiece is a high quality one piece “badass” style but with a tunematic saddle layout, very, very cool! The tuners are Schaller clones of a high quality finished in chrome as is the rest of the hardware. The Ultra sports jumbo frets and needed no additional fret work to play right. The set neck is very solid and had no bend when pressure was applied.
The guitar is a very pretty guitar, the arch top is quite deep and three dimensional. The headstock matches the mahogany body with a subtle angle similar to the early Les Pauls.
Now lets get to a much ignored aspect of guitars these days…..the sound! The guitar when plugged into a clean amp (Twin Reverb) sounds full yet had no trouble cutting through the sound of a band. The pickups matched well and with minor adjustment balanced well going back and forth This cut is a very underappreciated aspect of a solid body hum bucking guitar. When I plugged this guitar into my 18 watt Marshall combo it really sounded great, great not good! Sustain and cut at the same time. The guitar sounded more like a Hamer then a Paul for that reason alone. Not midrange honky like a good Les Paul but that’s a sound I have only heard on good Les Pauls. Bottom line is the Ultra is not a Les Paul and should not be compared to one. Lastly when I plugged the Ultra into a 100 watt Super Lead it kicked ass big time. The pickups really stood up without any microphonics at all at any volume.
I believe that this guitar is well suited for most applications of modern music, I even played some credible sounding jazzy guitar when I rolled off the treble on the bass pickup. But I believe that it is best suited for rootsy music like blues or garage/punky music because it cuts so well. I also think that it would serve a strummer rhythm guitar player well.
For the money (about $800) this guitar is a score for sure, very good hardware, flamed maple top, set neck, very good pickups, versatile sound. That description would be a three thousand dollar Gibson in this world.
Review by Joey Leone fall 2005