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It arrived this morning. I was going to take some pics, but the ebay ones were good enough for now. I just finished a thourough inspection, and I'm VERY pleased. This is the elusive NOS guitar everyone dreams of! I have looked all over it for the slightest mark, or evidence that it has been played, and nothing. The frets have no marks on them at all. they are brand new looking, and have obviously never been touched by a string. The fretboard is the same way. It is a very dark rosewood, and has zero play wear. It doesn't have that smooth, rounded, worn-in edge yet, but is crisp and new. There is no pickswirl, no belt worming, no worn-smooth edges on the pickups. The back plates are shiny and 100% scratch free. Even the locking nut string clamps are unused. I looked underneath one, and there are no string marks at all. The real giveaway, is that other than the ancient layer of thick dust, there is no biological build up in or on any of the hardware, or the pickup cavities. I took one of the bridge saddles off, and even underneath, in all the crevices - clean as a whistle. I plan on taking it completely apart, and cleaning the dust and age tarnish off everything. Don't forget, this guitar is 21 years old (assuming I am right about it being a 1985).
How does it play? Well, I tightened the truss rod a smidge, lowered the treble side of the bridge, tuned it, and plugged it in. At first, only the neck pickup worked. I couldn't find a bad connection anywhere, but I switched the toggle a few times, and now it's fine. The pickups are horrible! Atrocious! Vomitous even, and not very quiet either. They sound like the crappy passive EMGs that Washburn used to use. I'll have to put in a Duncan Custom and GFS Crunchy PAF. Of course I'll save the stockers.
The ACT 3 trem is a very odd unit. It is surface mounted, not recessed, and seems to work very smoothly. The odd thing is, the strings are fed in from either the back of the long screws at the back (I would normally call these locking clamp screws, but that doesn't apply in this case), or from the rear of the trem block like on a Strat bridge. Either way, once the strings are on, they are locked in place by the little black clamps on the top of the saddles with an allen screw. The clamps look kinda bulky, and I assumed they would interfere with string muting, but they don't seem to make a difference. In fact, they offer the perfect place to rest the side of my palm while playing.
The neck feels great it's a thin to medium Les Paul type neck. I'm not sure what the body or neck are made from yet, but I think the neck is maple. The body is solid wood, and is quite heavy for it's size. Because of this, it doesn't feel too light like a lot of Vs do. It's got a good weight to it, probably around 7-8 pounds, and balances well. No nosedive at all. I'm completely guessing it's mahogany. When I take the pickups out, maybe I'll be able to tell.
I'm going to get to work tearing this apart, so that I can get some decent pickups in it, and give it a good cleaning. I'll give it a proper set-up, and get some more pics. Too bad about the pickups, they look cool as hell.
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