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tjon901 « My kind of shred guitar »
Published on 09/25/11 at 11:10This guitar is meant to take on the mid to high end ESP shred guitars. This guitar has a lot of the same features that you would find on an ESP with some extra touches. This guitar has the more modern design of making a shred guitar that can handle the modern music with low tunings. This guitar has a mahogany body and with a set mahogany neck. The neck has a rosewood fretboard with 24 jumbo frets. The pickups in this guitar are a fully active set of EMG's. You get an 81tw in the bridge and an a 89 in the neck. These are special EMG's because they are both splittable. Up top you have locking schecter tuners with a tonepros string through tune-o-matic bridge. The controls are two volume knobs with a master tone. Both the volume knobs have push pull pots so you can split either pickup into single coil mode. There is a 3 way toggle to switch between the pickups.
UTILIZATION
The arch top design is very comfortable and pretty different than what you would get on most shred guitars. The cutaways are pretty deep and give you good access to the upper frets. The necks on Schecter guitars are pretty big compared to a lot of other shred guitars so that will take some getting use to. I love the tonepros locking tune-o-matic. They lock down in place reducing wiggle and this increases sustain. They also do not fall off when you are changing strings. The locking tuners up top are nice as well. Schecter is really stepping up their game.
SOUNDS
Unlike a lot of guitars with EMG's this guitar has a pretty versatile sound thanks to the switching functions. The 81 is a classic EMG design and the 81tw just adds more functionality to the pickup. In full humbucker mode the 81 is a beast. It has a searing high gain metal sound. When I play music with a lot of palm muting I can get an awesome tone. The 81 really shines when you are playing tight chugging riffs. With the tune-o-matic bridge you dont have to worry about a tremolo going out of tune when you are trying to do heavy palm mutes. Tight chugging riffs and single note lines are what this pickup is best at. When you downtune all these traits just help to keep the sound nice and tight. It is very hard to get a muddy sound from this pickup. The TW came out in 2008 and has the dual mode function like the 89. It is like 2 pickups built into one. You get an 81 with a single coil in the case. It provides a good true single coil sound. You arent really splitting the pickup you are just turning on another pickup inside the case. The 89 is the original "splitting" EMG pickups. It is like an 85 but with the single coil pickup built in as well. In the neck the 85 is a great pickup. It has a smoother sound that works better for leads in the neck position. So with this guitar you essentially get 4 pickups, two EMG S models and an 81 and 85.
OVERALL OPINION
This guitar is meant to do battle with the likes of ESP. This guitar has much of the same features as its ESP counterparts but with slight tweaks that give it a slight advantage overall. You do not see many companies using the dual mode EMG's. This really shows that they want to add an air of versatility to the guitar. This is not just a metal machine it can get your good clean tones too but overall this guitar is pretty beastly.
UTILIZATION
The arch top design is very comfortable and pretty different than what you would get on most shred guitars. The cutaways are pretty deep and give you good access to the upper frets. The necks on Schecter guitars are pretty big compared to a lot of other shred guitars so that will take some getting use to. I love the tonepros locking tune-o-matic. They lock down in place reducing wiggle and this increases sustain. They also do not fall off when you are changing strings. The locking tuners up top are nice as well. Schecter is really stepping up their game.
SOUNDS
Unlike a lot of guitars with EMG's this guitar has a pretty versatile sound thanks to the switching functions. The 81 is a classic EMG design and the 81tw just adds more functionality to the pickup. In full humbucker mode the 81 is a beast. It has a searing high gain metal sound. When I play music with a lot of palm muting I can get an awesome tone. The 81 really shines when you are playing tight chugging riffs. With the tune-o-matic bridge you dont have to worry about a tremolo going out of tune when you are trying to do heavy palm mutes. Tight chugging riffs and single note lines are what this pickup is best at. When you downtune all these traits just help to keep the sound nice and tight. It is very hard to get a muddy sound from this pickup. The TW came out in 2008 and has the dual mode function like the 89. It is like 2 pickups built into one. You get an 81 with a single coil in the case. It provides a good true single coil sound. You arent really splitting the pickup you are just turning on another pickup inside the case. The 89 is the original "splitting" EMG pickups. It is like an 85 but with the single coil pickup built in as well. In the neck the 85 is a great pickup. It has a smoother sound that works better for leads in the neck position. So with this guitar you essentially get 4 pickups, two EMG S models and an 81 and 85.
OVERALL OPINION
This guitar is meant to do battle with the likes of ESP. This guitar has much of the same features as its ESP counterparts but with slight tweaks that give it a slight advantage overall. You do not see many companies using the dual mode EMG's. This really shows that they want to add an air of versatility to the guitar. This is not just a metal machine it can get your good clean tones too but overall this guitar is pretty beastly.