Price... It’s an affordable backup for a gigging guitarist, if 2 Gibsons are not an option.
Quality... It is a solid guitar, put together well.
Not that easy to come by, in the US, and most of the ones I’ve seen for sale are shipping from Japan, and are marked up to ridiculous prices, it’s a good guitar, but nothing about it would make me shell out more than $800.
You usually don’t know what you are getting. Sellers throw around the term “Lawsuit”, whether it is or isn’t, and the internet being what it is has hyped the shit out of the Japanese copies. Generally, anything made earlier than 1980 should be passed up. They are not remotely better than Gibsons, don’t believe the “They’re made like ‘59 Les Pauls, the right way.... long neck tenon” bullshit hype.
These older ones, mine is from 1982, usually need some work, back in the late 70’s and early 80’s Japan made reliable well built products, using cheap parts, they did it with cars, and this guitar indicates they did it with guitars as well. The bridge was junk, the pickups are meh, the nut was garbage, but it was all put together well lol... I had to replace the bridge and nut, and the pickups will go bye bye soon enough.... But the body and neck are solid, so it’s worth it. Some people like smaller frets, I do not, I don’t know if this is attributed to the guitar being almost 40 years old, and having had a few to many crownings done, or just the preferred fret size, but digging in for bends is not easy... I’ve asked around, and it seems the frets are always somewhat small.
If you have the cash for a Gibson, buy the damn Gibson. As bad as the internet hype is about these Japanese copies, so is the stuff about how bad Gibsons are. Just stick to a normal model, not some exclusive limited edition bullshit. I finally just bought a regular, old Traditional, and it kills. But if you can’t, and want something that has the “Standard” fixings, that is better than an Epiphone, these Burny copies are solid.