I like it but I've always known Sam Ash's "house brand" is Carlo Robelli, and I vaguely recall seeing other Angelicas in the UK/EU.
This Cortez has been on Reverb a while and might be similar (if not built at the same plant). Too bad for the cheesy tuners and the hefty price.
Limited time price reduction .This is a beautiful rare model from Japan offered at our shop , beautiful aged spruce top with dark rosewood back and sides , this has rarely seen any playtime on it , the frets are excellent, the fret board is excellent, new set of strings , action is nice despite i...
reverb.com
The Cortez is nice, priced too high no doubt, but one the finest MIJ lawsuit era guitars I ever had was a Cortez, as well as my set neck SG doubleneck, an amazing piece. There's nothing particularly cheesy about those tuners, they have covers, are sometimes seen without covers, stout shafts, brass gears, they're not particularly defective but 50 years after they were made they are often sloppy and worn out.
Cortez double neck, Cortez the Killer, like ten radical improvements over the actual Gibson in one model.
and then install cheap tuners.
You mean like Guild? I always get a kick out of this, when a Japanese "copy" guitar has the same tuners as they put on D35's and F30's for years, they're "cheap tuners" which they were, and by the 70's the availability of decent and cheap USA tuners probably mostly gone.
lookalikes have always been a huge kink of mine
I love em. Each one represents a whole lot of post war history, the Japanese becoming an indomitable force in the guitar world very early on. The copies they made to satisfy a domestic demand for mostly unavailable and seriously overpriced American guitars range from the mundane to the sublime, some examples walking all over "the real thing".
I'm especially fond of my Martin lookalikes. This one is all solid woods, 3 piece back. I picked it up at a well frequented pawn shop for $100, disgustingly grimy. It cleaned up. Matao was a brand of NW Music stores.
Matao Rosewood dread. And this is a case where the "copy" guitar uses top grade American tuners, this isn't that unusual as I had a Madeira with Grovers also.
Quite possibly Braz Rosewood? Real Milk Bottle Grovers.
I had this guitar sold on CL for $1200, a guy willing to travel from out of state with "Benjamins" and after a lot of snow related setbacks to meeting up, I eventually had to end the would be transaction, I just can't let go of it. It sounds rad, huge, loud, super overtones.
but most of them are all laminate making those prices very silly.
Prices are silly but the laminates are not.
From the lowliest Yamaha FG-75 - 1st guitar- to my two lam top MIJ dreads, you wouldn't really know or care that it was a lam top, except it won't crack.
I've studied these 3 ply tops, mindblowing, ultra thin, sometimes near invisible as the longitudinal grain joins at the soudhole. Obviously made from very quality tonewoods, with real nice grain on top. It works, it resonates just fine, sometimes extra fine.
A lam top Yamaki.
I never realized the top on that one was also lam til several years after I owned it, sent from Japan during Pandemic. I showed it to a guy who played the hell out of it, sounded just fab, and neither one of us noticed it was lam, on a sunny porch.
Extra fancy binding.
And back.
And this is lam, but man does it sound good. Honestly, it just about sounds better than my '73 D35 which a lot drier sounding. In this case the seller thought it was a solid top and it was forgivable.
Same tuners as the same year D35, they work fine.
