Les Korn Guitar – The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly
A few of the flaws:
Well, this is a long story really. This was my first attempt to buy a nice carved top jazz guitar. At the $2500 I paid for it, I thought I was in for an amazing bargain from an up and coming luthier. But, I just could not bring myself to be happy with this guitar and its numerous flaws, and I wanted to post my account so that anybody considering such a guitar had some point of reference.
First, the good. The materials used were clearly top notch. The flame on the back and sides was exquisite. The polished ebony tailpiece was in itself amazing! Ditto the polished ebony pickguard. And the split block inlays. These are certainly the marks of a classy instrument. And most importantly, the tone of the guitar was great. It was very loud acoustically, and quite resonant. Notes leapt from the fretboard.
Unfortunately, there was the bad. The frets were the roughest frets I’ve ever felt, even in comparison to a $99 Fender Squire Bullet. It was like murder trying to slide up and down the fretboard. There were numerous frets which weren’t level. But even these playability issues were overshadowed by the terrible nut, where the G slot looked like it was half an inch wide. I’m sure I’m exaggerating to some degree but it was huge, probably 5 times the correct size. So anything played with an open G sounded like a sitar with the string buzzing in the slot.
Then, there was the ugly. It looked like there was wood filler along the seams. Bits of glue which had gotten dirty and turned black were in the finish. Glue was leaking out from the seams.
So, one of the main reasons I gave this guitar a shot was because there was a return policy to go along with it. I am taking down the actual content of these emails because some time has passed and I want to give Les a break and the benefit of the doubt by assuming he might have changed his ways.
In summary, he fought me tooth and nail to give me a refund which was supposed to be a pretty painless process as promised in the ad. My hope is that he’s gotten better not only in his business practices, but also in his building. From the photos I’ve seen of his recent work, I believe that is most likely the case, but I have no further personal experience to comment on.