B.C. Rich Special Edition Beast

I purchased an American made Beast pretty quickly after they premiered. It had 24 frets and a Floyd Rose tremolo system. There were three knobs, a volume and tone, and a pickup selector switch. It had a really awkward shape that I thought I would get used to, but didn't. It was also huge and had an unbelievably large hard-shell case that was pretty annoying to carry around. The floyd rose also proved to be unnecessarily difficult to maintain, even though I was taught how to do it multiple times. I later realized that they probably hadn't worked out all the kinks with this model yet.

UTILIZATION

The neck is good for playing metal riffs. Soloing wasn't a chore, but it could have been better with a Les Paul or even an ESP. The last notes were easy to reach as long as you kept your hand close to the fretboard... otherwise, you risk clipping your hand on a jagged edge (don't sit down playing this if you don't want to dig into your body.) It's heavy, and it's awkwardly shaped. The sound is decent if you're into strictly metal, otherwise, avoid at all costs.

SOUNDS

I grew tired of this sound pretty fast. Once I grew out of my pre-pubescent death metal phase, I had little use for this. I ended up selling it to some kid who paid way more money to have it fixed up because it was such a pain to maintain. I used to use a Marshall stack and a Crate Blue-Voodoo stack, which both were ideal for the kind of music I was playing. The clean sound is pretty much awful. It's only worth playing if you need to do machine-gun riffs or some two hand tapping stuff with the gain CRANKED. Then it sounds pretty good, I guess. Not being into those sounds anymore, I cringed when I picked one up again, just because I realized that I had actually paid for this at one point.

OVERALL OPINION

I used the guitar for about 3 years before I sold it. I didn't like it's lack of versatility, and I hated the clean sound. I liked that it wasn't too expensive, but I probably should have gone with something else. It's probably not even the best BC Rich out there, so I wouldn't recommend it over the Warlock or Mockingbird models, especially the higher end ones. Again, though, BC Rich guitars are for metal players only, so if looking like a badass metal god is more important to you than getting a decent-sounding guitar, then go ahead. Otherwise, avoid at all costs.