SeriesSchecter Damien Elite

This guitar is comparable to an ESP MH-350. It is a basic solid metal guitar. There arent many frills on this guitar but it gets the job done due to nice hardware. The Damien elite is a much better value than the normal Damien due to the fact that it comes with fully active EMG instead of pretend EMG passives. This guitar has a super strat shaped mahogany body with a bolt on maple neck. The neck has a rosewood fretboard with 24 jumbo frets. The guitar has cross inlays similar to the ones on the Jeff Loomis signature guitar. The EMG pickups are a standard set of 81 in the bridge and the 85 in the neck. It has a master volume and master tone with a 3 way switch. At the bottom there is a tonepros tune-o-matic with a string through tailpiece for more sustain. UTILIZATION Schecter playability is more hit and miss than most companies. When you get one you should just assume that it will need a setup. The features on this guitar are pretty good for the price. The tonepros bridge with the string through tailpiece is a nice touch although I wish it had locking tuners. The rotomatics are nice and have a high ratio but locking tuners solves problems better than high ratio tuners. The heel is big and square and it is barely slanted so it will get in your way a bit while playing on the high frets and its perfectly square so the edges are pretty sharp. You will have to check for sharp fret ends. Guitars like these that come from overseas and dont have any binding tend to get sharp fret ends due to the wood contracting during transport. This causes the end of the fret to pop out a bit from the wood. I find that this rarely happens on guitars have have binding on the neck. This guitar does not have any binding. SOUNDS This guitar is saved by the high quality time tested pickups it has. If a set of EMG's cant make a guitar sound good than nothing will. The 81/85 set is well known and well used in the guitar world. It can do any type of music that requires a good amount of gain. The 81 in the bridge is super tight and has over the top gain. It has a top end grind that prevents the sound from becoming muddy. The 85 in the neck is another classic EMG pickup. In the neck is it perfect for fat high gain leads. It is a bit smoother than the 81 so it does the lead role well. It is also good in the bridge if you are looking for a fatter tone overall. EMG active pickups can make just about any guitar sound good and they seem to make guitars easier to play as all the notes and harmonics you are looking for just pop out. OVERALL OPINION This is a pretty decent guitar but for the price and the type of guitar it is I could not recommend this over an ESP LTD. You can get an ESP guitar just like this for the same price and 9 times out of 10 the out of the box quality will be better. Schecter guitars seem to be more hit or miss than other guitars. The quality hardware on this guitar save it overall but you can get a better guitar overall that comes with the same hardware for the same price.