Your Instruments and Gear XI

I have a new guitar.

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

Cool score scooter, very clean looking. Those tuning pegs are way cool too. Oil that fretboard son!

Bs... how do you afford all of this amazing gear?

great lineup of pedals. like the coachella of stompboxes

I'm selling the Siggery... (anyone wanna buy it?)

here is said guitar:

Parker PDF70



Snagged it for just under 400USD (they usually retail for 600USD) new. I saw it on sale and gave it a spin, turned out to be a nicely solid guitar. Ebony fretboard, maple neck, mahogany body, graphtech nut - great deal for the price. The frets are well dressed, the body comfortable and light and the guitar surprisingly loud. I sold my Siggery to fund this because it was a heavy-ass guitar and unpractical - I can't teach with a fanned fret 7-string lol. I also think I prefer playing 6ers... yes good grief...

I'm really pleased with the PDF70 though, plays like a dream. Whilst it doesn't have the hallmarks of Parker guitars (set neck, carbon graphite reinforcement, ball-bearing tremolo), it's still very well made, with good materials for the price. And I can beat it up without feeling any remorse lol. However, I do have a few griefs with my guitar:

Unnecessarily huge backplate


This is the lowest the action goes


Small cosmetic flaw


They're not huge deals though. The chipped paint is only noticeable if you're up close kissing the tremolo and the backplate at least gives me a huge cavity control to *bleep* around with (i'm thinking active electronics...). The action is mildly irksome but I'm not too primadonna-esque with regards to how low my strings are - I spent 2 years exclusively playing acoustic whilst my RGT was being tortured to death.

Streaky ebony, delicious



I'm thinking of 18v EMGs on this guitar... 89 in the neck fo sho, 85 in the bridge? any ideas?

can you post the prospective specs of the custom?

nice score man. what bkps are you thinking of getting? how is the 25" scale?

don't forget to subtract the included british gst in the price of pickups. i think it's like 10%?

you can try the axepalace.com for a US bareknuckle dealer too... although i don't know if its cheaper. (maybe shipping)