Schecter Custom Corsair

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. 

Yamaha Pacifica 611HFM

This is truly one of the best values for the money. It's a solid guitar that feels like custom shop quality for the price of a midrange guitar. It's a bargain for the $600 asking price and your getting a lot of guitar for the money. I can't think of another guitar at that pricepoint that will give you seymour duncan pickups and locking tuners. The transparent black finish is so gorgeous. The pickups fit perfectly with this guitar. The Custom 5 humbucker is a little modern sounding, but very clear and it coil splits nicely. This pairs well with the P90 pickup in the neck. Normally, I hate the strat style shape as it always tended to slide off me while sitting down, but this Pacifica never had that problem. It's extremely comfortable to play. 

The neck width is a little narrow for some people but the shape is comfortable and it's not thin. Overall, just a comfortable, versatile, great sounding, great looking guitar that won't break the bank. Highly recommended for beginners. Unfortunately, I did end up selling this guitar reluctantly. I have some other guitars that I just wanted to play more and so I was downsizing to make it happen. If there was one knock, and it's more personal preference, it's that it always sounded good in an almost too perfect way. It never inspired me creatively that was out of the ordinary. 

Epiphone ES-339 P90 Pro

I had a black Epiphone ES-339 with P90 pickups. The guitar was sweet looking and I really appreciated the look of it. There was really no particular reason to sell it other than I had some many P90 guitars and needed the space. I could have just as easily kept it. The price of these are a really exceptional value.

The pickups sounded great and the craftsmanship of this Chinese made guitar has gone up recently. The biggest problem with craftsmanship usually shows around the f-holes. In this case (with the help of black body color) it really didn't show at all. As I said, the pickups were great on this semi hollow body guitar and I like having the adjustomatic stop tail piece because it provides a very taught response. The weight of the guitar and the size was perfect for me.

Where it maybe lost out to some of my other P90 guitars is the feel of the neck. Sounds awesome and looks awesome,  but the feel of the neck was a bit generic like it was any mass produced guitar. Another problem, the electronics were cheap. In less than a year, I had to take it in to have the pots cleaned because one of the pickups was going in and out.

Epiphone Casino Coupe

The Epiphone Casino Coupe is the smaller version of the Epiphone Casino and is derived from the ES-339 in size and shape.It's comparable to the size of a Les Paul. The Casino Coupe is still a hollow body, offers the P90 pickups, and extremely light, but in a smaller, more comfortable size. While I liked the size and comfortability, I just did not bond with this guitar. I had it for about 4 months before I decided to sell it. I preferred the sound of the full sized Casino better. The sound of the Casino Coupe just sounded generic and non-articulate to me and I didn't like the feel of the tailpiece which vibrated like crazy.

Needless to say, I sold it and bought the similar Epiphone ES-339 P90 Pro. It was priced cheaper and ended up being a much better guitar for me.

2016 - Update

It's been a few years since I've updated this post. A lot has changed in my gear, but I think I'm going to start updating again with reviews of some of my past gear that I've already sold off since I last updated the blog and some of my new gear that I've kept and am really happy with.

To start things off, here is my last family shot of my current gear. It was taken a few months ago and has already had some subtractions and new additions.

Epiphone Riviera

This is a Korean made Epiphone Riviera with full size humbuckers. It had great tone, extremely comfortable, and lightweight. I ended up selling it for a number of reasons... the first was the nut width wasn't very wide so it had a very skinny neck with close string spacing. There was also an issue with the bridge which was tilted at an angle caused by the string tension over time.

Otherwise, the only other reason I got rid of this was because my Yamaha SA2200 sounded better and had a nicer feel.

Yamaha SA2200 Semi-hollowbody

The superior quality of this 335-style guitar by Yamaha is noticeable when you pick it up in your hands. These are rare guitars that are hard to find in stores. However, this is one guitar I could safely purchase online and be confident that the build quality of this Yamaha instrument would live up to all expectations.

I purchased this guitar sight unseen. The reason I chose this guitar was it's reputation and the ebony fretboard. I love the feel of ebony fretboards from the Schecter Porl Thompson Corsair that I owned. In terms of feel, quality, and most importantly the sound... this yamaha is awesome.

Also, I've had several guitars with a coil tap to turn hum buckers to single coils, and this one is the only one in which the single coils actually sound great. If there is any downsides, it's the bulky size that doesn't always suit me and the gold hardware is beginning to tarnish and wear off.....