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Hatsubai « Great old school sound »
Published on 11/18/11 at 14:13The Fender RI 62 is much like the Fender 70 RI that I reviewed earlier. These are guitars that a lot of people don't know about for whatever reason, and it's a shame considering their quality is either as good, or better, than the normal MIA line up that you tend to see in stores. The guitar had an alder body, a maple neck with a rosewood fretboard, 21 frets, dot inlays, a vintage style tremolo, three single coils, one volume, two tones and a five way switch.
UTILIZATION
The guitar's fretwork was pretty good. There was one low fret that needed taken care of, but it wasn't a huge deal. I was able to fix that with a few adjustments and filing work. The nut was cut nicely on this, so there were no tuning issues when it came to moderate playing with the vintage-style bridge. The neck joint had a slight gap, but it was nothing too out there. I'd put it on par with the MIA series that you tend to see today. The finish on this was worn quite a bit, but that's because it was a heavily played guitar. As a result, it's hard to talk about how well the finish holds up to wear, but it's pretty good for its age.
SOUNDS
This had the DiMarzio old Virtual Vintage series pickups installed in it. The bridge was a Heavy Blues and the neck + middle pickups were some older VV models that escape me right now. The bridge was great for that super fat, blues tone. It could handle gain quite nicely, too. The neck and middle are there the magic really happened, though. The neck was super sick for leads and cleans. Combine the neck with the middle, and you have an amazing clean tone, as well as the perfect mid gain pickup setting. I'd probably swap in a humbucker in the bridge, but aside from that, the guitar was awesome.
OVERALL OPINION
You can get these at bargain prices if you search around enough. I tend to find a lot of these guitars in various pawn shops around the country because guitar owners sell them to people on the net, and those people, in turn, sell them to people who have no idea about Fenders. eBay is also another good area to search.
UTILIZATION
The guitar's fretwork was pretty good. There was one low fret that needed taken care of, but it wasn't a huge deal. I was able to fix that with a few adjustments and filing work. The nut was cut nicely on this, so there were no tuning issues when it came to moderate playing with the vintage-style bridge. The neck joint had a slight gap, but it was nothing too out there. I'd put it on par with the MIA series that you tend to see today. The finish on this was worn quite a bit, but that's because it was a heavily played guitar. As a result, it's hard to talk about how well the finish holds up to wear, but it's pretty good for its age.
SOUNDS
This had the DiMarzio old Virtual Vintage series pickups installed in it. The bridge was a Heavy Blues and the neck + middle pickups were some older VV models that escape me right now. The bridge was great for that super fat, blues tone. It could handle gain quite nicely, too. The neck and middle are there the magic really happened, though. The neck was super sick for leads and cleans. Combine the neck with the middle, and you have an amazing clean tone, as well as the perfect mid gain pickup setting. I'd probably swap in a humbucker in the bridge, but aside from that, the guitar was awesome.
OVERALL OPINION
You can get these at bargain prices if you search around enough. I tend to find a lot of these guitars in various pawn shops around the country because guitar owners sell them to people on the net, and those people, in turn, sell them to people who have no idea about Fenders. eBay is also another good area to search.