London City Comet MK1...?

[Tomskiiii]

Hey people, this is my first post here :)

Im a blues guitarist, always played my old 'Epiphone by Gibson' strat... one of the earlier Epiphones i guess, since it still says Gibson on the headstock too, but I play my uncles MIM Tele more than the strat nowadays and thinking of buying a tele.

This London City remake caught my attention, please don't flame it immediatly because it's not a Fender, but it seems like this imitation is really extraordinairy,
I just wondered what the 'professionals' would say about this.

Thnx for reading in advance :D

I play blues, country and 70's - 80's pop for about thirty years, nowadays rarely . I fell in love with the guitar when I was trying a Vox Pathfinder 15 R amp in a shop and asked the sales person for a tele with a real tele sound to try the amp. I began to play and loved the sound I could get with this guitar.

I assumed the sales person had given me some fancy Fender with Texas pick ups and I was astonished to see the London City label. I play both fingerpicking style and flat pick. The guitar handles both styles well. I find the pick ups surpisingly well suited for finger picking style because the pick ups give a calm sound and do not pick up many distracting finger and hand noises. I also own a '76 stratocaster and I must say that the London City outperforms the strat for my style of playing in all departments.

Together with the Vox amp, which has very responsive tone settings, tremolo and reverb, I can get all the sounds I want. I only open up the gain a quarter turn or so to get a slightly distorted / overloaded sound. The Vox / London City Telecaster combination is perfect for me. I tried all the small amps, cubes, epiphone tubes, yamaha tubes, behringer, orange but preferred this Vox with the London City. Never thought I would be able to get such a sound for so little money.

I also tried a few US standard tele's in the shop because I was curious now but I was not impressed. I played a couple of years ago on a bunch of 70's Tele's and the London City sounds just like that and sometimes better and in my view deeper with a good sustain. Clearly not all Fender tele's sound the same anyway.

A no brainer; I bought the guitar on the spot for one quarter of the price of an American Standard.

This is just one of many very optimistic reviews, its really interesting..

http://reviews.harmony-central.com/r...omet+Mk+1/10/1

[Fatmanstratman]

Welcome to the TDPRI, Tomskiiii! You have found a great place to hang out, read and learn! Enjoy!

I take it that you are quoting from a review on Harmony Central?

With all due respect to HC, I tend to read most of the reviews with an open mind. You would be amazed how many folks buy a complete P.O.S., but because they don't know any better, they post a glowing review saying that "this is the greatest guitar I have ever owned - incredible value at $89 brand new". Similarly, there are those who buy a perfectly fine instrument but think it clever to flame the guitar, the manufacturer, and the store where they bought it from.

Like all public forums, HC reviews are simply the opinions of the individuals who choose to post there; as we don't KNOW who these folks are, and therefore don't know how qualified/experienced they are to MAKE such opinions, it is dangerous to give too much credence to what they say.

FWIW, these London City guitars have been discussed on the forum several times before - you may want to use the "search" function to find the appropriate threads. I don't have any personal experience of this make of guitar, and without some decent pics to look at it is hard to comment.

Sorry if this isn't particularly helpful - just being honest!....

[Fatmanstratman]

Just been doing a little more research.....

It appears that the London City brand is unique to Holland - quite why it is named after a UK city, where Telecasters are not made, is beyond me...

From the pics I've managed to find, like this one from the www.muziekcentrumvangorp.nl website........



.... it looks a pretty decent "copy" of the real thing. Everything looks about the right size and shape, and at 249 Euros (around £185 UK Pounds) it seems reasonable value. That's about the price of a Squier Standard Tele.

[Tomskiiii]

Originally Posted by Fatmanstratman

Welcome to the TDPRI, Tomskiiii! You have found a great place to hang out, read and learn! Enjoy!

I take it that you are quoting from a review on Harmony Central?

With all due respect to HC, I tend to read most of the reviews with an open mind. You would be amazed how many folks buy a complete P.O.S., but because they don't know any better, they post a glowing review saying that "this is the greatest guitar I have ever owned - incredible value at $89 brand new". Similarly, there are those who buy a perfectly fine instrument but think it clever to flame the guitar, the manufacturer, and the store where they bought it from.

Like all public forums, HC reviews are simply the opinions of the individuals who choose to post there; as we don't KNOW who these folks are, and therefore don't know how qualified/experienced they are to MAKE such opinions, it is dangerous to give too much credence to what they say.

FWIW, these London City guitars have been discussed on the forum several times before - you may want to use the "search" function to find the appropriate threads. I don't have any personal experience of this make of guitar, and without some decent pics to look at it is hard to comment.

Sorry if this isn't particularly helpful - just being honest!....

I know about Harmony Central, but this Comet MK1 just got a big wave of enthousiastic comments, from almost everyone. Also, I read a very promising article about it in a renowned Guitar Magazine here in the Netherlands, too bad it's in Dutch or else i could post it.
I know Harmony Central is full of crap comments and people just saying it's good because they bought it but this London City seems to be different. Anyways, sorry for double-posting, I guess I should've used the search button ;)

[jhundt]

Tomskiiii - welcome! it's always nice to have a new member from Holland. There are currently about 20 (or more) TDPRIers from Holland. We try to organize an NL Telecaster jam session every year. We had one in November in Utrecht, and we're talking about arranging a Summer Jam and Barbecue in Rotterdam this summer. I am maintaining an email-list of Holland Telecaster players. If you are interested in coming to our next party, why don't you drop me a mail at jhundt@wanadoo.nl and I will put you on the mailing list.

I saw that London City guitar in the magazines too. It looks real nice (it looks just like my old '68), and I have read some good reviews. Have you seen one in a shop anywhere?

[Tomskiiii]

Yep, a shop in den haag called Vanilla Music Store ( http://www.vanillamusicstore.nl/ ) sells them :) i bought one there this week, Butterscotch Blonde like the pic, i spent an hour in the shop switching between the London City, a Squier Telecaster and a Fender MIM standard tele, comparing sounds on a huge Koch amp and found out the sound actually is amazingly close to the original Fender, while I thought the Squier sounded good too but a lot different then the London City and the Fender.

So I bought it on the spot. Hehe. 259 euros, almost nothing if you ask me =D
This review (in dutch) was pretty good too:
http://www.alphenaar.com/comet.html

London City also has a thinline version, which also seems a great imitation,
this is the thinline version (again dutch) review
http://www.alphenaar.com/thinline.html

About the jam, I'll try to think about it but it really depends because my summer is crammed full of visits to festivals and concerts already :P (If youre talking about summer holiday, that is)

[olewichita]

fatmanstratman,

london city was a dutch amp company from the 60s making british style amps so surely the company name was chosen to play in on the british invasion... tj

[Jobe]

Originally Posted by Fatmanstratman

Welcome to the TDPRI, Tomskiiii! You have found a great place to hang out, read and learn! Enjoy!

I take it that you are quoting from a review on Harmony Central?

With all due respect to HC, I tend to read most of the reviews with an open mind. You would be amazed how many folks buy a complete P.O.S., but because they don't know any better, they post a glowing review saying that "this is the greatest guitar I have ever owned - incredible value at $89 brand new". Similarly, there are those who buy a perfectly fine instrument but think it clever to flame the guitar, the manufacturer, and the store where they bought it from.

Like all public forums, HC reviews are simply the opinions of the individuals who choose to post there; as we don't KNOW who these folks are, and therefore don't know how qualified/experienced they are to MAKE such opinions, it is dangerous to give too much credence to what they say.

FWIW, these London City guitars have been discussed on the forum several times before - you may want to use the "search" function to find the appropriate threads. I don't have any personal experience of this make of guitar, and without some decent pics to look at it is hard to comment.

Sorry if this isn't particularly helpful - just being honest!....

Hello everybody

(I'm new here and found this page with google. i searched for london city mk1....)

Yes it's true what you say but i'd like to add a small comment.

I've been playing guitar for over 10 years now and it all started out with a Sunn Mustang and a noname guitar amp.

After a few lessons i started to play in a band and needed some good equipment. so i played the fender strat (japan) from my uncle. and i bought a Fender Deville.

After few years i bought another fender, it is one of my favorites, a beautiful jazzmaster

and after that i sold my amp and bought a Seymour Duncan convertible 2000 :)

So i think i know good guitar equipment sounds like

Today i bought a London City Tele MK1

and my opinion this one sounds bizarre! good! it looks exactly the same and plays awesome, the neck is a bit thin but i like it.

the only thing i disliked is the fact that the neck is hard to bend but i'll get over that.

i think within 10 years this one could be a collecters item....

oh and if you want one, just try to get the mk1, it is better then the mk2...

hope's this helps

later