Godin Freeway SA (Lightburst Leaftop Hi Gloss) Reviews

4.3/5.0 based on 2 customer reviews

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Customer Reviews

Tim Withington
from Killingworth CT
December 3, 2012Music Background:
Player

Godin Freeway SA

I bought the Godin Freeway SA after playing a Progression as a backup to my Godin LGXT and to use with my Roland GR-55. This has become my main guitar for a number of reasons. First it’s light weight and the neck has a nice slim profile with a nice radius. The pickups are really good and I can play this through a clean JC 120 and get really nice tones. I love taking this guitar along with my GR-55 on gigs and run it through the PA. It great to show up with just two things in hand and set up in seconds. Overall the Freeway is an awesome quality guitar for the money and one that is not made in Asia but in Canada and the USA. This is truly a great guitar with limitless possibilities. I love it!!!

Professor Charlie Phillips
from Jacksonville Florida USA
July 8, 2011Music Background:
Full time musician with a part-time 9 to 5 as Professor Digital Media and Studio Recording FSCJ, Forty years musician, Bachelor of Music, Masters Art Teaching Computer Information Systems. Toured and lectured for four major music companies in the good ol

Professors Review – Godin Electric Guitar Freeway SA (Synth Access)

Professors Review – Godin Electric Guitar Freeway SA (Synth Access)

Experience: Full time musician with a part-time 9 to 5 as Professor Digital Media and Studio Recording FSCJ, Forty years musician, Bachelor of Music, Masters Art Teaching Computer Information Systems.
Toured and lectured for four major music companies in the good old days.
Currently playing in a old fart rocking working house band. Music styles – play anything on the back of a twenty-dollar bill. I have twenty plus working guitars and more in the collection. All this is carp till you pick up the instrument. I have lived a long time.

The Instrument: In a sentence: A Strat on steroids! Yeah!

Experience with the instrument: Own it and use it as my primary live guitar mainly for the Synth interface.

Description:
I purchased the Godin Electric Guitar Freeway SA in early June 2011. When I received it I was impressed with the beauty of the craftsmanship. This is truly a well-made guitar for the money. Being my first review I must explain that I am very picky about how my guitars are set up. As soon as I placed the guitar in my hand I knew I had work to do.

First I noticed the neck was not straight and rgw strings were to high for my old arthritic hands. Primary setup took about 20 minutes to get it playing. I am sorry but I was not impressed with the Godin brand strings and had to change them.

Second I liked the feel of the neck but was surprised to find it more like my Gibson SGs necks. The neck is a bolt on neck that is slim and tapered for easy play and speed. The next thing I noticed and had concern over was the neck was out of alignment were it joins/sits in the body block. The E sixth string was falling off the frets. Happy to say I solved the problem by loosing the hold down screws a little and then torked the neck (pushed the head stock down) into alignment with the bridge while I tighten the screws. I have had no further problem.

I had to set the intonation on three strings to get it in tune with the body.

Plug it in… Plug it in.
This is where the excitement begins. Was shock by the power of the pickups. Very fast to crunch distort but extremely sensitive to the volume control and cleans up nicely. The tone knob works and has a good range. This makes me very happy! My main gigging amp is an Egnator Renegade but I have every high in-amp out there. (product of being a gear hound with no kids). I found the guitar to be bass heavy due to the humbuckers but was able to eq it to my tonal sound quickly. The single pickup is balanced tonally very well to the humbuckers but I had to adjust the pickups height to match volume out of each other.
I then tried the freeway in my Marshall 410h with jvm 900 4-12 cab. It rocked the house hands down. I then tried it in my Fender Hotrod DeVille. It has a great sound though I had to mess a lot with the bass settings because the DeVille is very bass heavy. I will post some YouTubes soon.

After all this I just had to grab my favorite strat and do an A/B comparison with friends in a jam session. Is the freeway a strat? No, It is a strat on steroids. Does it play like the strat? No, It plays like my SG. Does it sound like a strat? Sometimes but it screams without effects a lot better than my strat. I like how it cleans up with a nice warm sustain sound.

The Synth Access.
The reason I got excited about buying the Freeway was for the Synth Access. I just brought the new GR-55 (love it). It connects seamlessly. Do not have to mess with the GR-3 pick setup and crap. The Freeway bridge saddle pickups do not mess with the tone or sustain of the strings at all. You do need to set the GR-55 to pickup H to make it work correctly. No further adjustments were needed. Best tracking yet of any guitar interface. Godin has taken much time to make this work.

Sales and Service: These guys are the best. Always solve all problems and issues quickly and professionally.

Last thoughts: For the money, quality and workmanship, I have a new useful instrument in my personal arsenal. This is a workingman’s guitar that will last a lifetime. I would take time to check this instrument out but give it time to grow on you. The Freeway has solved a lot of problems for playing live for me since I am Synth heavy in my playing and like a guitar interface. (Days are gone of left hand hammering strings and the right hand playing a keyboard). Did I mention that with the SG style neck it is slightly wider so finger picking is breeze?

Thanks for reading and hope this helps.
Prof Phillips