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Hatsubai « James Hetfield's newer sig »
Published on 05/30/11 at 18:30James Hetfield has yet another signature model out for the masses. This time, he has an older Eclipse style body with a unique paint job going on to mimic how hot rods look when the paint is sanded off. Those spots are supposed to be various layers of primer that have been sanded back or something. The guitar features a mahogany body with a maple top, mahogany set neck, rosewood fretboard with the standard flag style inlays, a hard tail bridge, 22 extra jumbo frets, two volumes, one tone, one three way switch and a dummy switch at the very top.
UTILIZATION
The guitar itself is built extremely well. The frets are nicely crowned, they're even to allow for super low action, the finish itself is well done, the electronics are of high quality and the inlay work is clean. However, I'm just not a huge fan of that finish. I'm into the whole hot rod thing like he is, but the finish just seems overly fake on a guitar for whatever reason. This is purely a personal preference thing, so keep that in mind.
SOUNDS
The guitar sounds absolutely amazing. The EMG 81 in the bridge works so nice with this guitar that it's scary. It has the perfect amount of thickness and bite with harmonics galore. Extremely fast staccato riffs are no problem with this pickup, and it remains super tight even under the most obscene amounts of gain. i was never a huge fan of the EMG 60 in the neck. It delivers a great clean tone, but the gain tones always sounded a bit odd to me. It has an almost single coil quality at times, but if I wanted a single coil, I'd get the SA instead.
OVERALL OPINION
If you're a fan of Hetfield, I'm sure you'll be looking into getting one of these models. They're built extremely well, and they sound even better. It plays like butter, and I'd put it against any LP out there, even though it doesn't sound exactly like one. The finish kinda turns me off of it, but that's a personal preference thing more than anything else.
UTILIZATION
The guitar itself is built extremely well. The frets are nicely crowned, they're even to allow for super low action, the finish itself is well done, the electronics are of high quality and the inlay work is clean. However, I'm just not a huge fan of that finish. I'm into the whole hot rod thing like he is, but the finish just seems overly fake on a guitar for whatever reason. This is purely a personal preference thing, so keep that in mind.
SOUNDS
The guitar sounds absolutely amazing. The EMG 81 in the bridge works so nice with this guitar that it's scary. It has the perfect amount of thickness and bite with harmonics galore. Extremely fast staccato riffs are no problem with this pickup, and it remains super tight even under the most obscene amounts of gain. i was never a huge fan of the EMG 60 in the neck. It delivers a great clean tone, but the gain tones always sounded a bit odd to me. It has an almost single coil quality at times, but if I wanted a single coil, I'd get the SA instead.
OVERALL OPINION
If you're a fan of Hetfield, I'm sure you'll be looking into getting one of these models. They're built extremely well, and they sound even better. It plays like butter, and I'd put it against any LP out there, even though it doesn't sound exactly like one. The finish kinda turns me off of it, but that's a personal preference thing more than anything else.