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Been holding off on this for awhile, until I got acclimated to the guitar. This is WAY different than anything else I have, and so I wanted to wait until I had some time with it before I gave first impressions. If you don't know what these are... it's a composite neck/fingerboard, no truss rod, that holds pretty damn straight (there is a tiny bit of relief) and never needs adjusting. This is bolted onto a wooden semi-strat shaped body made of maple I believe. There is no headstock, the guitars use strings with balls on both ends, and has 40:1 tuners at the bridge that turn kinda like the fine tuners on a JT6 trem, but more movement and a LOT better feel.
The pickups are EMG 81/SA/SA actives, 5 way switch and volume and tone control. Pretty normal electronics.
Now for the cool thing - the transtrem. It's kinda kahlerish, which in my opinion sucks... but the trem, once set, can change the pitch of ALL SIX STRINGS at the same rate. So... you can pull the bar up and whatever strings you're holding will go up 'in tune' like you used a slide. If this wasn't cool enough, you also can lock the trem into different positions and the guitar transposes itself. Stock you can go into locked position (where the trem doesn't float and it's in 'E' standard) - down to D, where an E chord open with all six strings actually sounds like a D, and then C. Up you can go to F# and G. The song "summer nights" by van halen uses one of these guitars - he locks it in 'G' and then plays open chords for the intro, then later on unlocks it down to E. He also uses the way the notes stay in tune as you whammy it on "get up" - both songs from the 5150 album.
The guitar also has a spring tension knob under the trem - this is great for setting the guitar to Eb whammy, then you can lock the guitar into 'E' standard position. great for learning covers that are dropped in pitch. Then you can retune the entire guitar back up pretty easily.
Ok, so the guitar has all sorts of crazy stuff. How is it really? I love it. The neck never changes - if you like low action, you're always on the edge of buzz depending on climate changes or temperature. Ever tune your guitar perfectly at a gig, then get it under some hot stage lights and it changes? Ain't gonna happen with the composite neck.
The TransTrem has to be adjusted to work properly, and it's a bitch. I'll never complain about setting up a floyd rose ever again. [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]
The guitar sounds great too - not as sterile as some have said, maybe I got lucky with a magical wood body, I dunno. The guitar does sound weird acoustically - each note is pretty even in tone and timbre, no dead spots or 'wolf tones' where one note jumps out. The neck is really flat too - action is even all up the neck. My wolfgang holds a better action, but it's a near supernatural guitar... has the best neck of the 4 I've owned, and the other 3 played great.
Two downsides on the guitar so far... it needs new trem bearings, which are cheap, just a pain to replace. The new ones I'm going to use are sealed, so it should be last time it needs them. They tend to go out every few years, at least the stock 'non sealed' type.
Also, the high E strings have a tendency to pop - they don't like being stretched to G a lot. I've gotten around this by soldering the ball ends of my E strings.
All in all, a great guitar, and should have the same playability/neck shape 30 years from now. [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]
Pete
The pickups are EMG 81/SA/SA actives, 5 way switch and volume and tone control. Pretty normal electronics.
Now for the cool thing - the transtrem. It's kinda kahlerish, which in my opinion sucks... but the trem, once set, can change the pitch of ALL SIX STRINGS at the same rate. So... you can pull the bar up and whatever strings you're holding will go up 'in tune' like you used a slide. If this wasn't cool enough, you also can lock the trem into different positions and the guitar transposes itself. Stock you can go into locked position (where the trem doesn't float and it's in 'E' standard) - down to D, where an E chord open with all six strings actually sounds like a D, and then C. Up you can go to F# and G. The song "summer nights" by van halen uses one of these guitars - he locks it in 'G' and then plays open chords for the intro, then later on unlocks it down to E. He also uses the way the notes stay in tune as you whammy it on "get up" - both songs from the 5150 album.
The guitar also has a spring tension knob under the trem - this is great for setting the guitar to Eb whammy, then you can lock the guitar into 'E' standard position. great for learning covers that are dropped in pitch. Then you can retune the entire guitar back up pretty easily.
Ok, so the guitar has all sorts of crazy stuff. How is it really? I love it. The neck never changes - if you like low action, you're always on the edge of buzz depending on climate changes or temperature. Ever tune your guitar perfectly at a gig, then get it under some hot stage lights and it changes? Ain't gonna happen with the composite neck.
The TransTrem has to be adjusted to work properly, and it's a bitch. I'll never complain about setting up a floyd rose ever again. [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]
The guitar sounds great too - not as sterile as some have said, maybe I got lucky with a magical wood body, I dunno. The guitar does sound weird acoustically - each note is pretty even in tone and timbre, no dead spots or 'wolf tones' where one note jumps out. The neck is really flat too - action is even all up the neck. My wolfgang holds a better action, but it's a near supernatural guitar... has the best neck of the 4 I've owned, and the other 3 played great.
Two downsides on the guitar so far... it needs new trem bearings, which are cheap, just a pain to replace. The new ones I'm going to use are sealed, so it should be last time it needs them. They tend to go out every few years, at least the stock 'non sealed' type.
Also, the high E strings have a tendency to pop - they don't like being stretched to G a lot. I've gotten around this by soldering the ball ends of my E strings.
All in all, a great guitar, and should have the same playability/neck shape 30 years from now. [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]
Pete
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