I've always been a fan of the Schecter Corsair line since the days of my Porl Thompson signature guitar. I've also had many guitars built at the World Music factory in South Korea and all of them have been high quality. So when the Corsair Custom was introduced, I was very excited, but also a bit hesitant. It's the first time, I had really seen Korean made guitars go above the 1k range. But I decided to move forward with it, because of their reputation for quality and it had some nice features, such as the locking tuners, the pearl finish and pearl inlays.
The good news is that this guitar sounds way better than the Porl Thompson signature ever did. The pickups are excellent. The fretwork and the fingerboard were impeccable and these guitars are sooo light weight and resonant. It really feels great holding it. This was consistent with the three Custom Corsair's that I tried.
Unfortunately, there was also consistently poor craftsmanship as well. I exchanged this guitar twice and after the third one I received, I called it quits. The first guitar had a top that wasn't cut correctly so there was a glue seam that was showing. I didn't want to take a chance that this may cause a problem later. Secondly, the f-hole binding ran over a bit and they failed to sand the excess off. The second guitar was marred by a gloss varnish drip on the top which showed up like crazy on a satin finish guitar. I contacted Schecter at this point and showed them the photos which they forwarded on to the factory. To me this is an acknowledgement that there are problems with their quality control. For my troubles, they offered to send me Schecter stickers. 12 of them. I can only assume they wanted me to use them to cover up their blemishes. I decided to exchange that one too since resale value would further take a hit if I decided to ever sell it. The third one that came was probably the best of the three. But even that one had a smaller glass varnish drip and a solder drip. As much as I wanted to like it and keep it, I decided to return that one too.
I'm hoping that this was just a first run problem and hopefully subsequent runs will be more polished. It really is a fantastic sounding guitar and if I was strictly a player that used it for gigs and stuff, then I wouldn't care about the blemishes as it was going to get it's fair share of nicks and dings. But the other side of me thinks that a guitar selling above the $1k mark should be free of these avoidable blemishes. Comparably speaking, I could get a blemish-free Fender American strat or tele for the same price. Or even the Gretsch Electromatics which sells for a few hundred dollars less, come from the same factory, and are perfect. I just expect more than these silly mistakes.
