NGD - Patrick Eggle Berlin Pro

Voxman

Back from hols about 4am this morning. Had a fab hols with some great frends in Paphos, fabulous weather, great social/music scene and a surprisingly good hotel.  

Bought on here from @pete624000 ;just before I went on hols (& prev one of @RevMatt ;guitars), Pete is a great stand-up guy who was an absolute pleasure to deal with, great friendly comms and very helpful.  Picked it up from my neighbours late this morning - very well packaged ...took me about 5 mins to get to the guitar!  lol!  As I was told, the locking catch on the Patrick Eggle Hiscox case is locked in the open position but I called Hiscox and they're very kindly going to send me a key for the case which I hope should fit.  

So, very early impressions after only an hour or so's playing.

The guitar looks stunning and is in great condition, it's very compact and light, very comfortable round my neck, but overall its a little shorter than I'm used to which means I'm picking nearly over the neck p/up whereas normally I pick
between the two.  Neck is very nice, slightly fatter than earlier PE's but still very comfortable. I might actually try some 10's on it as it feels just a little 'loose' with 9's. Sperzel's work very smoothly and hold tuning well. It does need a set-up though and I'll see if I have some time this weekend to adjust the neck and bridge & re-string it (there is a bit of fret buzz particularly on the bottom E but I should be able to sort it).  

One thing I'm going to have to do though is replace the volume pot.  I'm used to controlling clean/distortion with the volume control and I just don't like it - the taper on the pot simply doesn't give me the control I need - it comes on too suddenly and needs to be much more gradual at the beginning.  It's a personal preference and shouldn't be hard to fix, but oddly its the only guitar I've ever had where I need to replace the vol pot.  I also might get a tone control added (in addition to, not in place of the 3-way rotary).  

Tone wise it's quite different to my PRS or in fact any of my other guitars.  The 9 positions do give some nice flexibility and I'll need to experiment to see what works best with what.  Once I've set it up, replaced the volume pot and played it a bit more I'll let you know how I get on. 

Re pics, I've lifted some that RevMatt  originally posted:









Cheers

Rich

RevMatt

Very nice (still).

BeardyAndy

Very nice. I had a New York and found it needed 10s, I think it has something to do with the distance between the bridge and nut on PE's.

maltingsaudio

Nice one enjoy and 10’s definitely 

Musicwolf

Nice guitar.  I've recently brought my 1993 Berlin Pro, which I've since new, out of retirement having replaced the original Wilkinson locking trem with a now locking version.  Great guitars.

drwiddly

Very nice, enjoy! Look forward to you reporting back when you've had a chance to set it up.

As you may know, I own five PE guitars from the 1990's and rate them very highly indeed. I'm not a fan of the stock Kent Armstrong pickups they used in the mid period and I'm not a lover of Seymour Duncan pickups in general so most of mine are now fitted with various Oil City pickups and I'm very happy with them.

Musicwolf

Interesting, I had thought about changing the pickups on mine (Seymour Duncans) but I decided that I was just doing it for the sake of it.  It's sounding fine as it is.

Did you keep the rotary coil selector?  I was thinking to swap this for a conventional tone control with maybe a pull switch coil tap?

drwiddly

My Berlin Deluxe still has the rotary selector but the other three Berlins have had them replaced with a tone control. I haven't bothered with coil taps as I don't use them that often but it would be easy to fit one if needed. I have kept the rotaries in case I or a future owner wanted to put them back.

I'm sure that my issue with Duncans  is probably peculiar to me. I can hear a spike in the upper mids on most of their models and it really grates. I've owned quite a few guitars with SD's over the years - Les Pauls, HSS  Strats, a Pacifica, Eggles and a Flying V and they all had that spike. Probably just me and if you like your guitar as it is, leave well alone!

andy1839

I've got a few of the modern Eggles but never had an original older one.
I really loved the ones with the leaves on the fretboard.

Yours looks great, congrats!