Your Instruments and Gear XI - Page 2

EricF It's the same with me. I've recently grown to like acoustic more. Electric is just way too noisy and gimmicky for me. It's almost like you can get around not having skill by using different effects. With acoustic, like you said, you can either play it or you can't.

Another thing that pisses me off with the electrics is you can't strum on them easily. You try to strum a chord and it just becomes a huge blur of amplified crap. You've pretty much always gotta palm mute with electrics, which is something I don't like doing all the time because it limits your strumming abilities.

No offense to any electric guitar players that read this, I have electrics too. I just prefer acoustic. I know BS just got his new Manson, and I bet it'll be amazing. Good luck with it Bs!

quote EricF

Man N00b Killer, I love your guitar. I didn't notice your post in here until now, but that's a delicious Fender you got there.

Hahah thank you. It was my dads but he gave it to me when I got older. It's a 50th anniversary Telecaster I believe

And Simon, when are you gonna get that camera? I wanna see more!

gatecrashing this thread right meow, sorry all.

Hello, for those who do not know this is actually former moderator of this forum FortePenance posting on my new alternate account because I forgot Forte's password and the user is registered to an old email account of mine which I also no longer have the password to. Anyway, lengthy sentences aside, the battle-scarred of this forum will recall that I basically *bleep*ed up all my guitars through attempted mods and general stupidity.

So, over summer I sold off my two guitars, a Hello Kitty strat (lol) and my half-sanded Ibanez RGT42DX and then busted a nut working all summer to fund a custom 7-string guitar from the British luthier Marty Siggery.

Here are photos:







The specs are as follows:

27"-25" fanned fret scale, vertical fret at the 7th - 24 frets
6100 fretwire, 10"-16" compound radius
48mm graphite nut
Sperzel locking tuners
3pc birdseye maple neck with ebony fillets
swamp ash body with 2mm zebrawood veneer
custom siggery bridge + HS pickups
3-way selector, 1 volume, 1 tone
tung-oil finish

I shan't indulge how much I paid on Marty's behalf but I will say he charges a very fair price. The custom work is not flawless but is still quality, particularly when considering that this is pretty much a complete custom.

The guitar plays well. It's my first 7-string but the guitar neck has been expertly crafted, really easy to adapt to. A bit thicker than an Ibanez 7 and slightly narrower, perfect. The all-natural finish looks beautiful and feels beautiful too. The fanned frets are easy to play, they haven't been a hindrance at all and a surprising number of people (non-guitarists) don't even notice that the frets are slanted.

Fanned fretting is genius though. This is the clearest sounding guitar I've ever played - 9th chords cut through the highest of gains brilliantly and double-stops are joyous. The swamp-ash/zebrawood combo works in perfect tandem, the low strings have that delicious swamp-ash midrange growl and the highs are piercing but not tinny & painful. The guitar also sustains like a mother*bleep*er.

The hardware, which was all handmade is solid enough, i'm quite impressed by the sturdy bridge although the pots/domes are a little rough. Nothing drastic though and I can live with it. The nut is a little raw (lol) but as long as it intonates, whatever. The pickups I'm not quite sure about yet, the single coil sounds a little flimsy for me, not quite vintage enough for that stratty chime or high-gain enough for those Gilbert-esque tones. The humbucker sounds better, kinda reminds me of a Super Distortion but if I muster up enough cash, Bareknuckles could be tempting.

Dealing with Marty was a nice enough experience too. He works alone and like I said charges a really reasonable price for a custom. Originally, he quoted a wait time of 4-6 weeks which I thought was pretty unrealistic (the guitar took 5 months in reality) but he's definitely a good guy. There was a period where we lost contact for about 3 weeks and I nearly cancelled my order because of it but he apologized and offered to cover shipping costs (I said it was unnecessary though) and all was dandy.

All in all, pretty pleased with the guitar.

yeah

Lol you forgot the password for Forte so that's why you're using that account? That's funny as hell. I was wondering.

But these pictures do look way better than the Facebook one. How was transitioning to the fanned frets? I've always thought it was a good idea for ERG's but did it take you a little to get used to frets that aren't straight?

In any case, I'm really jealous.

Fanned frets are really easy to play, not hard at all, the difference is hardly noticeable playingwise. Soundwise, it's fantastic though, everything is so clear which I like.

The transition has been alright. Right now I tend to base my playing around the E string still but that's not necessarily a bad thing.

Bs, are you getting another Manson?

Apparently so!

quote ejaculadhesive

Bs, are you getting another Manson?

That's the plan, yeah, although this one will be a full custom rather than a signature model, basically with the intention of having it do everything that I currently can't, so it's pretty complex. I'm just waiting to hear back for confirmation that everything I've asked for and then we can start getting the process underway as it'll take about another year realistically. Oh, in fact I've just had an e-mail with a few points that need to be fined out. Better go and sort those out.