OK, yet more guitar shopping, this time back at G-mart. I spent about 2 1/2 hours playing instruments.
This time I grabbed the American Deluxe Tele and the Schecter C-1 Classic that I’d liked before (such different guitars; they sat on their stands and sneered at each other), and did a taste test against other guitars. I asked for any higher end Strats or Teles, and more Schecters, and any other shredder models they thought would be good. I ended up playing 5 more guitars against the two I really liked.
The new girls I ended up playing:
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Another American Deluxe Tele, this one in Ash, maple neck on blond body. This one did not have a sculpted body, and was marginally heavier than the non-ash Deluxe Tele. I can see why its called a Plank. The tone was somewhat hotter than the other Tele, but not amazingly so. Other than that, they were just about the same playability. One really pleasant surprise that I’d overlooked last week on bot this and the other Deluxe Tele was the little button on the volume control that made the middle position of the selector sound very different (series? parallel? dunno, doesn’t matter) and hotter than ‘normal’ – really good rockin’ tone for both guitars with this activated. Sweet.
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A ‘51 Reissue Tele, faux aged (though restrainedly). This guitar was extremely hot, a really rockin’ tone. But – something was wrong with the neck pickup – some of the volume, and all of the tone had been rolled off, and it sounded really muddy and half there; when the neck pickup was selected, the tone control had no apparent effect on the sound, so this guitar had some wiring issues I guess. The neck was really big and chunky, but I got used to it fairly quickly; I wouldn’t say I loved the shape but it didn’t put me off either. Shame about the neck pickup, I was really thrilled with the overall tone using just the bridge p/u.
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An American Deluxe Strat, rosewood fingerboard. They didn’t have any deluxe maples. In retrospect, I should have also asked for an American
Standard Strat with a maple neck for comparison. Rosewood is actually kind of putting me off on the Fender guitars, I’m really liking the maple necks. OTOH, the sounds of that strat was awesome, a real rocker, and I’d guess that’s the rosewood talking. But I didn’t like the neck that well, and it felt a little cluncky. Bends were as unforgiving as my $200 strat clone. Awesome tone though.
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Another Schecter, a C-1 Plus. Nice looking guitar, not really goth at all, in an orangey flame finish with cream binding, and nicer/more restrained inlays than the C-1 Classic. Very pretty. Unfortunately the action was set high enough for slide guitar, so I sent it to the back of the class. GC guy said he’d get the action fixed for my return engagement on Thursday.
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Yet another Schecter, an Exotic Star I think, but the picture of that guitar on the Schecter site doesn’t match my recollection. This guitar felt exactly the same as the C-1 Classic, I couldn’t find a hair difference. Surprisingly, this guitar and the C-1 Classic cleaned up pretty well when I reigned them back a bit, and sounded pretty good on a clean or blues tone (though not so much as the Tele’s). This axe was a candy red flame thing with a ridiculous studded/flashy binding. It looked like something Dracula would play, ick.
I asked for, but they didn’t have:
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Any higher end Ibanez guitars, just basic models
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Peavey guitars. They only had the basic Peaveys, nothing nicer. They had a trade-in that the GC guy thought was a very nice/hot guitar, though it was pink (!). It was on layaway for someone, but GC guy thought I could play it when I came back on Thursday, just to get an idea if I want to look at more Peaveys.
The GC guy, near the end of the session suggested ESP or Jackson guitars for shreddiness. By that point I was pretty burnt out from playing, so we agreed he’d dig those up for Thursday.
Towards the end, I set the Fender to clean and used a POD, same model as mine, and got a good feel for how these girls would put out at home with my setup. All of them sounded very sweet through the POD, and punched up or added subtleties to the tones I already used.
We talked money, and he threw out that if I was really buying a 1000+ guitar, they could probably (“I’ll ask my manager”) lop another 10% off the marked price. The store’s return policy is 30 days. They sell an extended warranty for $85 for two years. It was basically a deal where they’ll deal with Fender re warranty defects so I don’t have to, and they’ll fix any reasonable issue themselves if they can. I guess this rides on how service-oriented the store is to recent customers, something I don’t have a feel for.
So, on balance, the scorecard:
- American Deluxe Ash Tele, just noses out the next guitar on tone.
- American Deluxe Tele.
- Schecter C-1 classic and C-1 Exotic Star, same as each other.
- '51 reissue Tele. Disqualified.
- American Deluxe Strat, rosewood. Didn’t like the neck feel, tone rocked. Disqualified for illegal bending noise.
- Schecter C-1 Plus. Disqualified, may be back soon.
I’m going to go back Thursday and probably buy something.
Afterthought: I played for more than two hours, and my hands were really tired, I never practice that intensely (yet). What was amazing to me was how good and loose I played after that workout, much better than when I’d sat down two hours ago. I dialed up something obnoxious on the POD and plugged in a Schecter, and let loose some monstrous arpeggio diddle-deedle-diddle yadyada metal thing that I somehow remembered from long ago, and I did it well. The GC guy looked shocked – I’d been doing blues riffs and stuff for the entire time earlier. I guess the muscle memory comes back after enough abuse. 
