Unexpected acquisition right before Xmas.

[BTMN]

$600-$800 US seems to be the prevailing rate.

Looks Fantastic along with the smile it's seems to have placed on your mug.

[Punkavenger]

I recommend you try a SH-5 ... worlds best non bootiki bridge pickup for rocking the free world

Merry Christmas!

[chap]

Honey had given me a check of a "certain amount" the day of my birthday. She said: "buy the guitar you want, provided it's priced around this amount".

So I read this as "I can roll in another $800 of my own money and get what I REALLY want" ... I assume that she is referring to her own $$ when she says "it's priced around this amount".

[zorrow]

By the way, just discovered the previous owner also had installed a coil-splitting pot on the bridge position --the original pot was in one compartment of the case, so I guessed it.

Now, when I coil-split the bridge pup to single coil mode, I get an amazing lead tone with all the bite and dynamics I like. However, this configuration makes the lower strings sound blurry and muddy. Shamefully, the low end tone gets back to focus only when I use the bridge pup in humbucking mode.

Well, I guess I need now a bridge pickup offering me a focused rhythm tone with tight lows, as well as a soaring, biting-but-not-piercing lead tone with lots of dynamics and "openness".

I just realize that the Hamer Slammer pickups do exactly so, and that's why I like them so much.

[KH Guitar Freak]

The neck I would say it's between a "C" and a "D" shape. The thickness should be medium+. I like this neck a lot. Very comfortable to play.

The fretboard is ebony. That's very slippery; I'm more used to rosewood. The frets are medium jumbo, I think. The action is set the way I like it: not very low, but not high. The fretboard feels very "fast", probably also because the radius seems to be wider than my Vectors'.

About the sound now: it's actually very sweet. Compared to my Vectors, the later sound more "cutting", while the Dean is way smoother. To give you an idea, when played unplugged it sounds almost like a classic guitar: loud and clear, with a lot of richness in the mid range and loads of sustain. When plugged, it has almost no "chug". The "Fenderish" "snap" I get from my Vectors (supposedly from the sutainblocks, or so I believe) is not there at all. This guitar vibrates just transparently, like a nylon guitar, though it does handle well my high gain settings --the distorted rhythm tone through my rig is "thick" or "dense", never harsh or aggressive, but it's not muddy either.

By the way, I did the test of trying to find the notes when tapping the neck and the body. The body seems to be tuned to Eb, while the neck is definitively G. That means they are a major third apart, which is a consonant interval, so it should be ok --according to Steve Vai's criteria for evaluating the natural resonance of guitars.

Cool. How do you work out the tuning of the body and neck btw???

[zorrow]

Cool. How do you work out the tuning of the body and neck btw???

You mute the strings, using a little blanket or a towel, and one of your hands as well. Then, put your ear on the body of the guitar and knock at it. The sound made by the body is like a drum's, so it does have a fundamental harmonic. Knock at the body several times, and you'll end by identifying the note corresponding to the sound it makes.

Repeat the procedure with the neck.

According to Steve Vai, guitars having consonant body/neck intervals are prone to sound better. BTW, he also says it's one of his cork sniffing trips, so don't take it too seriously.