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drkorey « 1988 Beauty »
Published on 04/09/11 at 15:32A 1988 beauty made in the USA. This is an older Explorer Pro with a 10% undersized mahogany body and normal neck, 24 jumbo frets on an ebony fretboard with killer split diamond inlays, one bridge pickup (a non original EMG 81) and one volume control, tune-o-matic bridge with string through body.
UTILIZATION
The guitar neck is nice and slim, like a 60's LP carve, but a bit thinner after the 12th fret and up. The neck combined with the lower horn cut away provides very good access to the upper frets.
The guitar is limited in the sounds it can produce because it only has the bridge pickup and one volume control.
The 10% reduced body makes this more ergonomic than it's regular sized brothers. I found it to have a nice balanced weight.
SOUNDS
I used this guitar with custom built Peters amplifiers, which are kind of a cross between a Peavey 5150 and high gain Marshall/VHT with a little Boogie thrown in. The amp was paired with an Avatar 4x12 that had Celestion G12h -30's and a Splawn 4x12 with Governor/ManOWar speaker combo.
I usually go for a nice thick Jerry Cantrell AIC tone, to use with my modern rock/metal band.
The guitar had a very focused sound that all mahogany guitars seem to have. It was nice and balanced all across the frequency spectrum. It held up well with high gain lead and rhythm playing. The EMG didn't clean up very well for clean sounds.
OVERALL OPINION
Overall this was a nice guitar. I bought it used, so there were some dings - but nothing too bad for being 20 years old. The guitar had nice sounds across the board with distortion and useable sounds for clean, due to the single EMG pickup.
I liked the neck carve, the weight and distorted tones the best. The cleans were passable.
For being used, the action, fit and finish were very good.
I have been through many guitars and had a number of years where I would buy, try and flip, which enabled me to have many guitars around to try out.
I bought this via the internet and was not able to play it before purchase. I bought it because it looked cool and had a good price and I knew I could resell it without too much of a problem.
In the end, it was too limited in sounds without having a neck pickup and it seemed to be very small when strapped on, I think I would have liked the regular sized better.
Knowing what I know now, I would have passed on buying it, even though I broke even.
UTILIZATION
The guitar neck is nice and slim, like a 60's LP carve, but a bit thinner after the 12th fret and up. The neck combined with the lower horn cut away provides very good access to the upper frets.
The guitar is limited in the sounds it can produce because it only has the bridge pickup and one volume control.
The 10% reduced body makes this more ergonomic than it's regular sized brothers. I found it to have a nice balanced weight.
SOUNDS
I used this guitar with custom built Peters amplifiers, which are kind of a cross between a Peavey 5150 and high gain Marshall/VHT with a little Boogie thrown in. The amp was paired with an Avatar 4x12 that had Celestion G12h -30's and a Splawn 4x12 with Governor/ManOWar speaker combo.
I usually go for a nice thick Jerry Cantrell AIC tone, to use with my modern rock/metal band.
The guitar had a very focused sound that all mahogany guitars seem to have. It was nice and balanced all across the frequency spectrum. It held up well with high gain lead and rhythm playing. The EMG didn't clean up very well for clean sounds.
OVERALL OPINION
Overall this was a nice guitar. I bought it used, so there were some dings - but nothing too bad for being 20 years old. The guitar had nice sounds across the board with distortion and useable sounds for clean, due to the single EMG pickup.
I liked the neck carve, the weight and distorted tones the best. The cleans were passable.
For being used, the action, fit and finish were very good.
I have been through many guitars and had a number of years where I would buy, try and flip, which enabled me to have many guitars around to try out.
I bought this via the internet and was not able to play it before purchase. I bought it because it looked cool and had a good price and I knew I could resell it without too much of a problem.
In the end, it was too limited in sounds without having a neck pickup and it seemed to be very small when strapped on, I think I would have liked the regular sized better.
Knowing what I know now, I would have passed on buying it, even though I broke even.
