Agile Guitars - is it possible to discuss them?

I thought Chinese meant crap as well until I took a chance on this Ibanez AR 325 and found out how well it compares to my 83 Japanese Artist. Even the stock pickups are good stuff. It's not the guitar the 83 is but it's surprisingly good none the less.



The guitar that really duplicates my AR-300 most closely, however, is about $2400 new from Ibanez. The AR-325 above doesn't have the heavy Gibralter bridge that mine does, nor is there a 10 ounce sustain block bolted to the body under the bridge. The 325's body is thinner than my 300, and I don't think that's an ebony fretboard. The $2400 guitar I spoke of is a 2619 or 2622 (I've forgotten) reissue. Dunno where it's built, but it's bang on the money.
 
I wasn't aware that there were still poo-slinging threads on the internet regarding Agiles (or R O N D O, for that matter), so when I heard there was one, I wandered over. Pretty tame!

I discovered Agiles in around 2008, I believe. About half a dozen of them crossed my path (I'm in El Lay) over a couple of months period, and I was surprised at the quality for the money. My first guitar was a '67 ES-335-12-string (still have it) and of the 50 or so guitars I have now (I rarely sell any), the largest representations are Gibson (mostly pre-1980), Carvin (seven of 'em including one bass), Moonstone, Nik Huber, Variax (!) and a knot of five Agiles.

My first Agile was an LP style, but came about strangely. I had a project that required a "Gibson Les Paul. Not one of those cheapo copies!" ala the band leader. It also required a Floyd Rose, and the only one Gibson was making at the time was the Axcess. I ordered up an Axcess Custom after looking at a friend's, because I wanted *white* binding, etc., and not the titty pink that showed up on the Axcess standard guitars. What I'd always hated about my other Gibson LPs was the clunky neck heel, and the Neal Schon signature guitar fixed that, but was nowhere to be found. Thus, the Axcess. But the guitar was going to need about $1500 worth of modifications, and I wanted a stalking horse; a guitar upon which I could try the changes before I committed them to the Axcess (a black one was going to be over $4K, one with a fancy top and a burst would have been another $1760). My original intention was to order up a Carvin CS6 (about $2K) and start with that.

But I noticed that Agile was offering a "semi-custom" order ability on a twice-yearly basis (at that time), so I started checking boxes.

I ordered the AL-3000 series, but with a Floyd, a wide/thin neck profile (1 3/4" nut width), a 16" radius, jumbo frets binding everywhere, neck-through construction (!) with a smooth neck heel, a full-thickness tight-flame maple top, and a one-piece back (...waitaminute...). It turned up on the same day as the Axcess (I couldn't get jumbo frets, no 16" radius, no neck-through construction, etc., on that one). The bill was $1160, with case, delivered. I suspect that the "custom shop" was actually the prototyping shop of the Korean factory, but I was stunned at how well the silly thing was constructed. It was far heavier than the Axcess (which has a thinner body and which is chambered), but I didn't mind at all.

Both guitars sounded fine and played pretty well the way they were, but both were gutted. Both got slightly hot '57s in the bridge, Fernandes sustainers, a DiMarzio Fast Track II sharing the neck pickup ring with the single-coil-size sustainer driver, OFR (German) Floyds (mostly so that we were sure that the big brass aftermarket sustain blocks wouldn't have issues), moved controls (an added rout put the Master Volume up closer to the bridge/bridge pickup and the guitars have a Master treble rolloff/tone) and the remaining two controls became a Sustainer Intensity pot and an active sweepable mids boost, and a Buckethead-style kill switch was added. The stubby cutaway horn on the Agile actually works better for me (I have huge hands). Both necks had their frets superglued and both were given a run on the PLEK (the Gibson had a Gibson hump, even though it was supposed to have been PLEK'd at the factory, the Agile had a slightly high fret at about the 16th fret but was otherwise surprisingly good). This was in 2009.

Fast forward to today, and the original Agile still plays spectacularly well and sounds great and there are absolutely no issues whatever. At some point I picked up a black AL-3100 Floyd (I'm not really a fan of black guitars, I should note) that has a standard clunky neck heel, a black AL-2000 Floyd (these actually have a Tilted neck heel that works almost as well as the Axcess for upper fret work and a 24-fret neck with the 24th fret in about the same position as a standard 22nd fret, which means that the bridge and bridge pickup are moved toward the neck pickup about 3/4" to maintain scale). Both have been fret-superglued and PLEK'd. About a year and a half ago, I found an AD2300 (double-cutaway Special-style guitar) with a set of Mike Reilander hand-wound P90 pickups aboard and picked it up for a song, and most recently (last two months) another AL-2000 Floyd (this one white) that had a sustainer and a diMarzio super distortion added. The two black guitars have been my go-to bar guitars (they have to sound good and be a credible defensive threat against staggering drunks) and they're just absolutely solid in both roles.

I was instrumental in the development of the AL-3200, which is a neck-through LP with an Axcess-like neck heel and tummy cut. At $499, and with a standard ebony fretboard and real MOP/abalone inlays, it's a helluva value compared to the lower end of the Gibson spectrum. I'm trying to get Kurt to have a bunch built with Floyds so that I can snag a couple and call it a day.

It's worth noting that R O N D O has done a helluva job bringing ERG guitars to the masses; Kurt has apparently spent some time at sevenstring.org paying attention, and while he wasn't the first 7-string out there, Agile has provided 8, 9, 10-string guitars in 27", 28.65" and even 30" scales at prices that made them *really* accessible, whereas beforehand they'd been very rare and usually custom-built and definitely expensive. Players were able to buy them, decide if they liked them, and then pass them on at only a tiny depreciation if they didn't. The big manufacturers are only now catching up, and none have caught up to the multi-scale (fan-fret) guitars in all those scales and string choices (AND with or without trems!). And the quality has been very good indeed.
K
 
I absolutely love my A G I L E AL-2000. Beautiful guitar, solid, well-made, plays great, sounds great. Scratched my decade-long itch for a Les Paul. I recommend them all the time. The higher end models must be even nicer. And talk about quality-to-cost ratio? The best I've come across.
 
@peskypesky - cool. I think I've been so damn pleased with various MIC/MII/MIK stuff that I'm .... just ... ready to go there more often. And as much as I enjoy what BWAS touts, it would be cool to see other stuff done via that route. Like I think the Eastwood lineup is sexy, but I find their prices a wee bit steep for where they are on the continuum.

And let's not even get started on the idea of $400 Reverend-types .... (drool).
 
OK.

When I first started having serious GAS, it was around what I'd call the 'glory days' of Korean guitar building - circa '96-'03, give or take. The value on the MIK guitars I have from this era are amazing.

...

Anyhow, I got an Agile Valkyrie. It arrived with some shipping damage to the finish. As I repacked it to return, I noticed that the guitar was OK, but not amazing otherwise. Thought about a refund but decided what the heck, and got another Valkyrie. That 2nd Valkyrie I got is a kickass guitar.

I've owned one. A P-90 Valkyrie (III, I think). They were changing to the offset design, so they blew them out for $99 + shipping. At the time, I had a MIK Epi G400 SG as well, and I preferred the Agile. The Epi humbuckers were meh, but I liked the ceramic P-90s in the Valkyrie better. I'd paid $175 used for the Epi SG, and sold it. For quite awhile the Agile was my only SG.

At some point something else floated my boat, so I sold the Valkyrie to a friend at no loss (it's long ago enough that I don't recall the resale price, plus I'd bought a hsc for it that went as well) and possibly a small profit.

I prefer Pauls to SGs anyhow, so I went SG-less for quite awhile, until I got a new Gibby SGJ for $339 on closeout with a Black Friday discount a couple years back. The Valkyrie was a good guitar but it went to an internet buddy, who still has it. And I still have a ton of P-90 guitars (Epi setneck Junior, Epi setneck TV White Special, Gibby LP Special, Hamer DC Special, Epi WildKat, Epi Casino), so it's all good.

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I love some SS amps, had a blues cube. Did not like it at all. Enough other people love em, I'd still say it's a great deal. guitar= obviously.
 
Not surprised that those went quickly...

GC has some Agiles in their used section (they usually have, like, two) this time around, and most of the prices are pretty near the new price charged on the "balsa wood and spit" site. I'm pretty well stocked at this point (I'm ordering up an AL-3200 with a Floyd and some options on the "custom" page sometime before Christmas), but someone pointed out a few oddities that I need to check out. The Craigslist in LA seems to have everything priced high enough to anticipate the low-ballers, but there aren't a lot of Agiles on the ground (nor do they stick around) there, either.
 
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