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My dealer finally got one of these in the Wine Burst color. I spent a couple hours this afternoon locked up in a practice room with it.
The custom shop certainly does a superb job on these axes. The attention to detail was nice to see.
The neck pocket was a super tight fit, not a bit of slop at all. Good job on the nut, it was perfect and didn't pinch the strings at all. The frets were super, great polish job on them with no rough edges at all. They made bending and vibrato so smooth, I had to look and make sure it was me doing the playing. They are using staggered pole locking tuning machines that are pretty cool. The frets are medium jumbos and felt fine to me. I loved the neck radius. The newer 12'' radius on the American models just never felt good to me. I prefer this at 7.25''. Weird, but it reminds me of my 70's strat which I loved. Light urethane coating and it felt fine traversing up and down the neck.
Nice job on the bridge as well, it was intonated properly (more thanks to the owner for the set up there) and stayed in tune great, although I am not a dive bomber. I always leave that to George Lynch.
The guitar passed the acoustic test, if you pick the high E and then mute it, the body continues to resonate. Plus it sounded great unplugged. Not Martin Acoustic great, but it still resonated well. Plugged it into a Blues Junior and a Marshall DSL. Great shimmering clean like you would expect from a strat and then sweet crunch. Playing lead thru the neck pup was a treat. Smooth and fat and creamy thru the Marshall.
I need to spend more time playing with the pups to decide if I like them. The neck and middle are custom wound and yield some great sounds. The bridge is a tex-mex and you could get great bluesy sounds from it, but I almost never use my bridge pup anymore. I certainly liked them more then the samarian pups on my american deluxe. In fact I didn't miss that S1 thingie at all.
I am going back in tomorrow morning to play thru my amp and give a closer listen to the pups. The rest of the axe is just sick. I love the looks, beautiful finish job. The sight of that fat headstock takes me back to when I 1st started playing in the mid 80's. I am taking my SG in tomorrow as well to compare the different tones between the two guitars. To see how difficult it will be going from one right to the other.
All in all a super cool guitar. I played a EJ strat after playing the Trower and personally didn't like it as much. It was a let down after hearing all the great reviews of it. I chalk it up to the neck radius more than anything else though. Other than that it was a great playing start, I just didn't like the feel of the neck. For me that's 90 percent.
chuck
The custom shop certainly does a superb job on these axes. The attention to detail was nice to see.
The neck pocket was a super tight fit, not a bit of slop at all. Good job on the nut, it was perfect and didn't pinch the strings at all. The frets were super, great polish job on them with no rough edges at all. They made bending and vibrato so smooth, I had to look and make sure it was me doing the playing. They are using staggered pole locking tuning machines that are pretty cool. The frets are medium jumbos and felt fine to me. I loved the neck radius. The newer 12'' radius on the American models just never felt good to me. I prefer this at 7.25''. Weird, but it reminds me of my 70's strat which I loved. Light urethane coating and it felt fine traversing up and down the neck.
Nice job on the bridge as well, it was intonated properly (more thanks to the owner for the set up there) and stayed in tune great, although I am not a dive bomber. I always leave that to George Lynch.
The guitar passed the acoustic test, if you pick the high E and then mute it, the body continues to resonate. Plus it sounded great unplugged. Not Martin Acoustic great, but it still resonated well. Plugged it into a Blues Junior and a Marshall DSL. Great shimmering clean like you would expect from a strat and then sweet crunch. Playing lead thru the neck pup was a treat. Smooth and fat and creamy thru the Marshall.
I need to spend more time playing with the pups to decide if I like them. The neck and middle are custom wound and yield some great sounds. The bridge is a tex-mex and you could get great bluesy sounds from it, but I almost never use my bridge pup anymore. I certainly liked them more then the samarian pups on my american deluxe. In fact I didn't miss that S1 thingie at all.
I am going back in tomorrow morning to play thru my amp and give a closer listen to the pups. The rest of the axe is just sick. I love the looks, beautiful finish job. The sight of that fat headstock takes me back to when I 1st started playing in the mid 80's. I am taking my SG in tomorrow as well to compare the different tones between the two guitars. To see how difficult it will be going from one right to the other.
All in all a super cool guitar. I played a EJ strat after playing the Trower and personally didn't like it as much. It was a let down after hearing all the great reviews of it. I chalk it up to the neck radius more than anything else though. Other than that it was a great playing start, I just didn't like the feel of the neck. For me that's 90 percent.
chuck
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