Larry Carlton L7 Metallic Gold New Gen

I have been waiting for almost a year for the new gen L7's to be in stock, and what a sad day it was when I got mine. SO MANY QC ISSUES!
Golden overspray on the neck, bass side binding on the neck is in 3 different shades, GraphTech nut was only there without proper filing, from the factory on the guitar, strings over the prenotched grooves, waaay too high. damaged TOM bridge, I got Gotoh replacement as compensation, the "ebony" fretboard is east Indian ebony that looks more like pau ferro than rosewood, maccasar ebony or even jet black ebony, and it was dryer than Sahara, after proper treatment, now it resembles more akin to rosewood than ebony, the neck joint looks awful, glue between the neck and the body is showing how it dripped out, and they just put brown paint and sealed it in poly, and it still looks disgusting, when I sent photos to Thomann team, they asked me "is that a neck crack?", no it is not, just glue sticking out and a very bad QC on Sire's part. The pickups are amazing, no doubt about that! But electronics did not work! Another QC issue! How this guitar even left the factory, I cannot fathom! The coil splitting didn't work, no problem for me, it was a cold solder on both push pull tone pots. The frets, at least are 9/10 done good, and the tuners work amazing. I didn't want to return the guitar, because, they didn't had another Goldtop, so, after they sent me a replacement bridge system (TOM and tailpiece) from Gotoh, I fixed every functional issue myself, now it plays good, sounds perfect, as I also swapped out the pickups for my prefered set od DiMarzio's for LP style guitars, and the stock pickups I stored for some project in the future, because the stock ones are also amazing sounding, that part I least expected.

I could say that unplugged it sounds very close to my Gibson LesPaul '60 reissue, with some less bass and middle freq, but expected, due to its weight releif (chamberd body). It waighs only 3,5 kilos!! On an amp i can't really tell the difference... Although feels a lot more comfortable in my hands than the Gibson! I only should change the bridge whith a Gottoh or a Tonepros, because this one gets a little buzzy some times...(you can't hear this on the amp) I've changed strings (DR tite fit 10-46) and after the intonation it generally stoped... I'll sure use it on gigs, with the Gibson on a stand as spear (in case a string breaks..)