I bought this a week ago, and it's really everything I was looking for in a Super Strat (not in order):
- Fender-Style Non-Angled Headstock
- Straight String Pull at the Nut
- A Floating Locking Trem that actually returns to Zero
- Good Sustain
- A Lack of Dead or Wolf Notes
- Good Tone
- Stainless Steel Frets
- Cool Pickups
- Some semblance of Strat quack
The neck is something I find just shockingly comfortable: it's a tad thicker than my other guitar (Washburn Trevor Rabin), and I love it. I once played a Fender Strat from the 80s with a Kahler (found in a New Mexico pawn shop), and it had the thickest neck I've ever played, this monstrous thing with almost a right angle at the fingerboard, very D-shaped. I have big hands and assumed it would be uncomfortable, but five minutes later I realized it was the most comfortable neck I had ever felt. Anyway, this Schecter neck is not anywhere near that thick (and it's a C-shape), but I do just love the feel of it. I'm finding that all along the neck it just lends itself to much easier play. The fingerboard has a nice 12" - 16" compound radius.
Speaking of the fingerboard, I just love the inlays. My favorite inlays have always been that offset style, where you have a dot between the low E and A strings, and this is a play off of that idea, except, in a really cool twist, they made the dots bigger, turned them into outlines, and, in the most unusual part, inlayed them with aluminum! In person it's just very striking. Additionally, there are Luminlay side markers. I'm a big fan of ebony, and this has an ebony fingerboard, attached to the wenge neck. Now this is a huge thing too: the neck has a texture to it but is still so smooth and comfortable, with no finish I can feel. It just feels like wonderfully polished wood, for lack of a better term. I don't know anything about wenge, but at least it feels incredible, and the tone and sustain of the instrument is superb.
The guitar came with 9 - 46s, but I like 10 - 46s, so I did a proper setup and switched to my preferred gauge right away. I lowered the action lower than I would want it just to test the fretwork, and it was just great, no problems at all. Then I raised it to the action I like, low enough not to fight the guitar, but high enough still to have the tone I like. To do my initial testing I released the trem spring tension and put business cards on the side of the sustain block away from the neck to level the trem baseplate. I then measured the height of the trem posts and figured out how many 64ths of an inch I'd want to move up or down, having also measured the action of the low and high E strings in 64ths. Then I loosened the spring claw screws, removed the bridge entirely (with the strings still on), and adjusted the trem post heights, also applying Big Bends Nut Sauce to the divots where the knife edges rest. I reattached the trem, set it up with loosened claw springs and the business cards, tuned and stretched the strings until stable, then removed the business cards and just adjusted the spring screws until the guitar was in tune again. I found rearranging the springs somewhat helped with achieving a good balance of tension between the treble and bass sides of the spring claw. I find during the spring tension process I like to do a ton of dives, pull ups, and regular string bends to test constantly that I'm returning to zero; taking time with this part yields so much return.
To the tone, I really like the in house pickups. I had to write Schecter for the wiring (which I've attached), because position 2 (counting bridge as position 1) was a little ambiguous to me. Position 2 is heavenly, just pure quack. It's a wiring position I wouldn't have thought to prioritize, the outer coil of the neck with the inner of the bridge, but I just completely love it. It has a .022 cap on the tone, which is nice and gives a good range. I'd go lower, but I don't want to mess with it any time soon. The pots themselves feel really solid and comfortable; I have no idea what they used, but they do feel high quality.
I'm finding tones so damn easily to dial in once I got this axe. I had this silly assumption that Floyds always suck tone and sustain no matter what, but I did so many tests when I found this thing at the store, including sustaining every note on every string. I really don't perceive anything missing at all, and I'm kicking myself for my assumption.
I initially had a problem in which dives would return to zero but pull ups returned a little sharp. I subscribe to the Haze Guitars newsletter and wrote Gerry, who was really nice and recommended checking the nut for movement. Right away I saw that at the factory they had started to strip the two mounting screws for the nut (it's a top mount). I then very very carefully tried to tighten them further, which I found I was able to do, and that solved the sharp return for bar pull ups. I'm sure they were using a drill to drive the screws in at the factory, saw the stripping starting, then just left it rather than going the rest of the way or doing what they should have done, grabbing a new set of screws!
Anyway, I'm in heaven with this thing, and I can't believe it has stainless steel frets at this price point. I would expect all sorts of problems, but the only one I found was fixed a turn of the screw. Here's my dream guitar on my balcony:
View attachment 83517
