Asher Guitars Electro Hawaiian ® Junior Lap Steel Guitar - Tobacco Burst - With Gig Bag!

My new Electrohawaiian lap steel guitar arrived yesterday in perfect condition. The guitar is beautiful. The build and finish are exceptional. The guitar came highly recommended, and I obtained it from Amazon at an excellent price. The gig bag is solid. The guitar tuned right up and held the D tuning perfectly. Still figuring out how to set the tone on the amp, as I am new to the world of electric guitars. So far, it sounds really good. Have lots to learn, but I am excited about the many years to come. Many thanks to Asher Guitars and Lap Steels. They have already contacted me to see to it that I am satisfied, showing that they will be responsive to any issues that may arise. In my view, all the evidence indicates that this is a top notch company.

So, first things first, I understand lap steels are niche to begin with, and a 25" scale steel is particularly niche. I understand that naturally drives the price up. I'll be keeping this guitar by virtue of the fact that I literally can't readily get a substitute, but quality issues aren't leaving me with a great feeling.Little details are shoddy for the money.- The output jack is not mounted flush. It looks like it's intended to be fully countersunk, but the hardware protrudes unevenly out of the lower bout.- The bridge is already leaning forwards slightly. It's normal for a twin anchor type tailpiece to do this over time as wood settles, but I've never seen this on a new instrument. Why no through holes? My $250 Recording King lap has through holes (though a much flimsier bridge, to be fair).- Control cavity had 3-4 sections of stripped and tinned LOOSE WIRE bouncing around inside. It was pretty clear that when the electronics were soldered up the excess was trimmed and left inside.- Pickup + control cavity appears to have shielding paint applied, but no effort to ground it. I don't really believe shielding does a whole lot to begin with, but if you're going to bother "shielding" something you may as well ground it. Similarly the rear plate of the control cavity has foil shielding, but no purposeful ground connection. I've seen Epiphone make the effort to create a ground linkage with some tape and properly ground that to the rest of the guitar.- Electronic components are "fine" – I don't think this has a functional effect, but if Mexican Fenders are shipping with CTS pots a more expensive guitar that doesn't even have a shaped neck or fretwire installed could go to the effort to ship with a fancy, if functionally pointless, pot.- Pickups are boring, they just have no particular character. That's ok, they're easy to replace (though upsetting to, when you discover the aforementioned loose wire inside the guitar). That said, it's lame that Asher tries to hit you with an immediate upsell to the upgraded pickup package. Other companies don't immediately badmouth their stock electronics out of the box. A ~$1k guitar shouldn't make you feel like you're immediately getting the budget configuration, even when there is and always will be a more upscale version of anything one would purchase.- The pickup routes aren't quite square. Not visible with all the hardware mounted, and of no consequence, but just not in line with the price point.In short, the build quality is at best on par with what one might expect for a $4-500 import instrument. I can appreciate paying a bit more due to being a smaller company and having poor economies of scale, etc. At the same time, I can go out and buy a Gretsch G5700 for $350 or a Recording King for $250. The build quality on both options is BETTER, even if the hardware quality is lower (but good enough it's not even worth upgrading).TL;DR:Build quality for the dollar frankly sucks. The only reason to buy this over something a quarter to third of the price is if you really want the longer scale length and two pickups.*****UPDATE:I spoke too soon on the electronics.The volume pot now has an intermittent dead spot and will need to be replaced.I'm knocking off another star.

Finally, a well-crafted, balanced, 25" inch scale, lap steel, that’s reasonably price. I'm played dobro and lap still for many years and always felt cramped by the shorter scale prevalent on most lap guitars when compared to my dobe.Mr Bill Asher nailed a grand slam with this guitar.I can play it lap style, or use a strap and play it standing up. It fits fine for standing. I did add a strap-lock button on the bottom of the guitar, and other than that, I didn't need to install anything else for standing.I built a little platform that attaches to my keyboard stand which enable me to switch between keys and slide ..... plus with the strap I can walk out from behind the keys and jam with the other players.I play the Asher which I named "Li'L Beauty" thru a single 12", dual EL84 amp. I like running the guitar straight into the amp and bypass the front end efx pedals xcpt for the volume pdl ---- however my small pedal setup includes: ST 200 Turbo Tuner ---> ancient CS-2 -----> a clone I built of the Klon Centaur Overdrive -----> DD-6 Delay -----> Ernie B Jr passive Vol Pedal -----> Amp. The CS-2 is mostly bypassed and the KloneClone is only set for a slight ovrdrive boost when I kick it on.The high output humbuckers cover all the bases to me, from a wide syrupy mellow smooth sound to a ballz2thwall scream. It's very easy for these pickups to overdrive the amp so even, without any pedals you can put a lot of hair on your tone. The single vol and tone work well, and the tone control give quite a full range of possibilitiesThe guitar's setup was terrific, I figured some adjustments to the pickup heights would be necessary, and they were fine & balanced all across as is. The high quality included Gig Bag offers decent protection, altho I went ahead and ordered the form fitting hard case.One of the best things about this, compared to standard lap steels, is the string-tension-feel due to the 25" scale length. If you're coming from the acoustic dobe or weissenborn world, this guitar will not be a hard transition for you.