Sigma Les Paul

Hi all,

First post for me, looks like a great site!
I have this Sigma Les Paul coming soon, does anyone have any info on this brand? I searched the forum and there wasnt much, any help is most welcome!











The seller said that the tuners have been replaced and also that the top is not solid, not a problem for me as I got it for a good price.

Thanks, Peter, Sweden

Hey Peter...
I can give you a "brief" rundown.
Don't know how you searched the forums but I had a huge rant about Sigma guitars in a post previously.
Your guitar has a plywood body...not maple...not mahogany but plywood.
Tokai used a REALLY thin slice of maple for the tops of these guitars and saved the good stuff for their own guitars produged under the Tokai name
The top is a very thin cap of either sycamore or maple.
Yours is actually the best looking sigma that I've seen to date...they usually look like crap...bad finish...really ugly pickup surrounds etc.
Now...they ARE collectable beacuse of who they were made by and who they were made for...made by Tokai...made for C.F.Martin.
The crap quality however does keep prices down.
I'll find the link to my previous sigma post for you bearing in mind that the guy who asked about his sigma thought he had found the holy grail and when I told him that his guitar was plywood he HAD to argue the point til i posted info from a sigma collector.
http://www.tokaiforum.com/viewtopic.php?t=8319&highlight=

Thanks for your reply Ozeshin, these are the sellers photos, I'll post some more when I get the guitar. I know that the seller has a good reputation and knows his stuff and that he wouldnt overprice it or suggest it would be as good as the real deal Tokai copies, you get what you pay for and this was a very decent price. On the other hand, it might be a very playable and nice odd bird in its own way...
Anyway, thanks again for your reply!
Peter

Oh I'm sure that some of the Sigma guitars can be made into players after some fiddling...I'd like to hear from you after you plug the guitar in and share your thoughts.
Production standards-wise and feel/sound-wise they're meant to be on a par with HondoII's or the old Ibanez '59ers.

Having owned a Ibanez Deluxe 59'er and regretting selling it I wouldn't personally lump it in with plywood Sigmas and Hondos but everyones different.
I know they were cheap but the one I had in a Ivory finish really rocked.
I also found out that there were CSL Deluxe 59'ers.

Can't imagine anything stranger than an LP copy sporting not only a bolt-on neck but a maple bolt-on neck, and yet that's what we find on the 1977 2342 Deluxe 59'er in the ivory finish, otherwise known as "The Sunlight Special". Cheap it may have been originally but you only have to clap eyes on the thing (see the cover of Paul Gilbert and Jimi Kidd's cd Raw Blues Power)to conclude that this unconventional combination makes for an extremely attractive guitar. As far as the tone and playabilty of either the black or the ivory 2342, you only have to ask yourself why Paul Gilbert, who can afford (or gets given) any Ibanez new or old or any other guitar on the planet for that matter, chooses to make such frequent use of this bolt-on necked LP copy "cheapo". You only have to listen to what he does with it to realize that, bolt-on neck or not, the 2342 offers a master like PG, as well as all of us less celestial players, something that transcends its humble origins... Guess I like it a bit. In fact every bit as much as the 1958 and 1960 Les Paul originals that I used to own! So, in my experience at least, set neck vs. bolt-on becomes a mute argument.

Moonlighter

http://www.ibanezcollectors.com/discus/messages/13/2403.html

I'll post some more when I get it, photos and whats it like plugged in.
About Ibanez, I have a 1978 bolt on Les Paul , Super 70's pickups with a (IMO) beatiful tobacco sunburst, that sounds and plays really good after some tweaking.
If I can borrow the kids camera I'll post some photos of it.
It sure don't sound like a Gibson, but it sounds good... Sort of 335 territory. Thanks for the input fellas, Peter

Having owned a Ibanez Deluxe 59'er and regretting selling it I wouldn't personally lump it in with plywood Sigmas and Hondos but everyones different.
I know they were cheap but the one I had in a Ivory finish really rocked.
I also found out that there were CSL Deluxe 59'ers.

Click to expand...

I too owned a maple fingerboard/bolt neck '59er and wouldn't piss on it if it were on fire...
It was identical to Paul Gilbert's...Ivory...maple board....zebra coiled p'ups...kinda attractive but not quite.
I've owned 20 Ibanez over the years...Korina Destroyers...DestroyerII's....a stunning Goldtop that was heavier than any Gibbo I've ever held....I even owned one of the first X series but that '59er....ah well...we all have different tastes eh.

I've had or played a Ibanez Artist, a Ibanez 80's Semi Acoustic, a Ibanez Roadster, Ibanez 59'er and a Ibanez EX170 with a plywood body from Korea with powersound pickups which is probably the worst guitar I have ever played except for a Hondo.
There are reviews for it at Harmony Central where they say it has a Maple body but when I took the neck off to do a fret dress there was the plywood in all it's glory.
Luckily I didn't own it, a friend did.
I took one of the Powersound pickups out and put it in my Fender Japan Fat Strat to see what would happen and the pickup just about totally took over the sound with a terrible trebly sort of sound.
Quite amazing as all the other pickups I've tried like Duncans, DiMarzio's and the original pickup didn't take over the sound like the Powersound pickup.
I then put a DiMarzio in the Ibanez EX170 with a plywood body and it didn't improve the tone by much.

Crappy photos of my Ibanez Les Paul bolt on, good enough for gigs at the rough side of town.. It's from 1977, not 1978 as I stated before







Two links to the bands I play with:

http://www.messarounds.se/

http://www.myspace.com/chokertrio

Cheers, Peter

Crappy photos of my Ibanez Les Paul bolt on, good enough for gigs at the rough side of town.. It's from 1977, not 1978 as I stated before

Click to expand...

And yet as collectable as hell.
Ibanez from the '70's fetch big dollars from the japanese collectors.
http://www.ibanezregister.com/Gallery/groups/kosaku nakamura.htm

I owned one of these when pointy guitars were all the rage.
I swapped a Fernandes for it....single dimarzio...floyd rose....white finnish with a huge yakuza style dragon tattoo graphic...i got ripped off coz the ibanez was a lemon

I don't think Ibanez ever made a good Les Paul copy. The interest in those is all hype in my opinion.

I agree Ducati. Ibanez was more focused on AR models which are very very good.(Artist).If I wanted a LP replica I would go for a Tokai as I did.
I feel these Ibanez LPs the same as Low end Grecos(their cousins).

Hi all, a little update. I got the guitar today and it plays real well, acoustic sound is full and quite warm.
I'll plug it in tomorrow, and see how it sounds amplified.
I'm in no way an expert when it comes to different kinds of wood or japanese guitars but to me it doesnt seem to be made of plywood, let me know what you think.







And maybe some help with pickup and bridge ID





And finally


Any help and input much appreciated, cheers, Peter

That looks like a mahogany back to me and definitely not plywood. I remember testing a new Sigma LP with a set neck in the early 70's. It had a natural maple top (no flame), a solid back and was a great looking and playing guitar. It was quite expensive too, you could get at least two other japanese LP copies for the same price. Around the same time I bought a japanese Epiphone (ET model), it cost less than a third of the Sigma.

Mike

Peter_K said:

.... let me know what you think. ...

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Body back looks like solid mahagoni to me.
Body top could be a laminat of mahagoni and maple on top.
Im not sure.
Neck tenon looks good, too.

If it sounds well and plays well, don't care too much about woods and "brand image".


Have phun with your Sigma!
Ciao
Burny

It's not a plywood body.
I've read that Sigma's came in low end models and higher end models and some of the low end ones seem to be plywood so it looks like your one is a bit higher up.
It's got a Gibson transitional tenon which means that the tenon is the same as early 1970's Gibsons before they went to a short tenon.
All in all it looks pretty good to me.

Well slap me with a fish..!!!!
It IS Mahogany with a maple cap.
All my info on Sigma comes from Sigma collectors.
I was lead to belive that Sigma ONLY made plywood bodies.

The SBG2-9 was pretty cool, with a natural-finished plywood body, white pickguard, rosewood fingerboard with white block inlays, gold hardware and Bigsby.

Click to expand...

Re-reading the info I was sent...it would appear that there were only a few models that were made using plywood.
Your's is certainly NOT plywood.
Hang onto it...

Thanks for your input fellas, I had a good feeling about this one
And yes, I'll hang onto this one, I wont be able to try it with the band until sunday, I'll give you a sound report then.

Here's two more photos



One with a strange angle, I'm not a very good photographer



Have a nice weekend, cheers, Peter

Hello. I bought this Sigma Martin back in 1985 here in Norway - used. I don't know more about Sigma guitars than the information I have read in this forum. I'm looking for some more information about this guitar - the wood of the body, neck and so on - and also why this guitar has the inlayed Gibson-logo on the headstock.

Did Martin produced low end and high end Sigma-guitars made of different materials and at different costs? I also want to know when this guitar was made. It has no serial number or stickers.

I also need information about the pickups. They sounds like DiMarzios, but I think they maybe are copys made in Japan - like the protomatics that Aria used.
















I can also be contacted at my email: [email protected] if you have more pictures of Sigma guitars.

See those 2 squarish shaped holes at the bottom of each pickup cavity, well Tokai does them that way. The Tokai squarish shaped holes must have something to do with Tokai's routers. All the other makers have rectangular shaped holes. Any guitar made by Tokai is easy to ID just from the hole shape at the bottom of the pickup cavity including these Tokai made Sigmas, 70s Tokai made Burnys, recent Burnys that are Tokai made, late 80s Tokai made Greco no serials and of course Tokais.

From what I've read Tokai made some of the Sigmas and from these images the routing matches the Tokai routing so I would say it's a Tokai made Sigma and probably a good guitar. It looks like it has a veneer top and is from the 70s and the body is probably African Mahogany with a Maple top although it's hard to tell about the exact wood types. I don't know about the pickups, they might be made by Maxon. I don't think the Sigma that started this thread on the previous page is made by Tokai. It was probably made by another Japanese guitar factory and the Sigma guitars were probably made by more than one Japanese guitar factory.