The Guitar Player Thread.

Got my replacement DK24, much better than the first one but I'm still not too impressed with Charvel's QC.

I had to put a small shim under the neck to angle it and stop the saddles from bottoming out. Action out of the box was .110 low E with the saddle bottomed out!, .09 high E with about .012 relief and it still had a ton of fret buzz from about 10th fret up to the 24th fret. After shimming the neck, leveling the frets, recrowning and polishing them I got it down to .065 low E, .045 high E, .006 relief and the saddles now have some adjustment range up and down. Just a tiny hint of buzz now here and there so not perfect but WAY better than stock.

The stock output jack makes a ton of noise/looses connection if you just barely move the cable at all so I picked up a Pure Tone jack to replace it with that I'll solder in tomorrow to hopefully fix that. I also replaced the stock plastic nut with a Earvana compensated nut and got the action at the first fret down to about half of what it was out of the box. Oiled and cleaned the fretboard, put on a new set of 10-52 strings strecthed, tuned and intonated. A lot of work for a BRAND NEW $1K guitar if you ask me, but all in all it was a fun little 4 hour project. Now I just need to start practicing and playing more....a whole lot more!

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It's amazing how effortlessly Jason played that! Uh...just a sec, let me adjust my tuning a bit and he dove right in. Amazing! It seriously sucks how life can just kick you in the junk like that.

I could never quite figure out sweep picking my timing is just so off when I try and it just sounds like a mess LOL. That video brings back so many memories of all the Guitar for Practicing Musician magazine ads from back in the day with Carvin guitars and Jason's guitar with the multi colored pickups and numbers on the fretboard. Man all the shred back then, Paul Gilbert and RacerX, Marty Friedman and Jason, Steve Via, Satriani, Yngwie..etc...Good stuff! Now I gotta dig out my old mag with Steve Vai's million hour long guitar workout and get cracking! 🤘

Have you seen any of Bernth's videos on YouTube? He plays a lot of amazingly clean high speed sweep/tap stuff like that too.

 
FastFreddy said:
It's amazing how effortlessly Jason played that! Uh...just a sec, let me adjust my tuning a bit and he dove right in. Amazing! It seriously sucks how life can just kick you in the junk like that.

I could never quite figure out sweep picking my timing is just so off when I try and it just sounds like a mess LOL. That video brings back so many memories of all the Guitar for Practicing Musician magazine ads from back in the day with Carvin guitars and Jason's guitar with the multi colored pickups and numbers on the fretboard. Man all the shred back then, Paul Gilbert and RacerX, Marty Friedman and Jason, Steve Via, Satriani, Yngwie..etc...Good stuff! Now I gotta dig out my old mag with Steve Vai's million hour long guitar workout and get cracking! 🤘

Have you seen any of Bernth's videos on YouTube? He plays a lot of amazingly clean high speed sweep/tap stuff like that too.

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Never heard of him but that’s funny because I was just watching videos from this guy and it seems like a really similar technique to what Bernth is doing there. Quick video but watch the end result
 
FastFreddy said:
Got my replacement DK24, much better than the first one but I'm still not too impressed with Charvel's QC.

I had to put a small shim under the neck to angle it and stop the saddles from bottoming out. Action out of the box was .110 low E with the saddle bottomed out!, .09 high E with about .012 relief and it still had a ton of fret buzz from about 10th fret up to the 24th fret. After shimming the neck, leveling the frets, recrowning and polishing them I got it down to .065 low E, .045 high E, .006 relief and the saddles now have some adjustment range up and down. Just a tiny hint of buzz now here and there so not perfect but WAY better than stock.

The stock output jack makes a ton of noise/looses connection if you just barely move the cable at all so I picked up a Pure Tone jack to replace it with that I'll solder in tomorrow to hopefully fix that. I also replaced the stock plastic nut with a Earvana compensated nut and got the action at the first fret down to about half of what it was out of the box. Oiled and cleaned the fretboard, put on a new set of 10-52 strings strecthed, tuned and intonated. A lot of work for a BRAND NEW $1K guitar if you ask me, but all in all it was a fun little 4 hour project. Now I just need to start practicing and playing more....a whole lot more!

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Kinda feel like this is way too low end of a guitar for those expectations. It's basically a Player Strat with a different neck.
 
Yeah I get that, I didn't expect it to be perfect. But as simple and generic as this guitar is a chunk of the $$$'s it cost could of went to at least setting it up kind of decently from the factory IMO. They didn't spend any of that money on fancy woods, finishes, no tremolo, no active electronics...etc and I'm pretty sure 90% of it is CNC machined by robots so yeah not much in the way of labor either.

If it was a $200-$400 guitar I could see issues like it had but not so much on a $1000 guitar. And yeah I know $1000 isn't high end $'s for a guitar but it ain't cheap either. There are probably tons of guitars I could of bought in that price range or less that would of been way better if I shopped around and did some research. It was like 10yrs ago but I paid way less for my Japanese made Jackson Dinky which came with a Floyd and a hard shell case that was fine out of the box and didn't have any issues like that.

Overall it was just a dumb impulse purchase on my part since I wanted a fixed bridge guitar and liked the simple look it has. But basically I just bought a $200 Squire and paid a $800 premium to put the Charvel name on it. So next time I'll go to a shop and buy instead of ordering something on a whim and spend my money a little wiser.

Hell I should bought a trem blocker for my Jackson and spent that $1k and met all you guys out at Ray's for the weekend LOL that place is a blast.

Caveat Emptor 😉
 
FastFreddy said:
Yeah I get that, I didn't expect it to be perfect. But as simple and generic as this guitar is a chunk of the $$$'s it cost could of went to at least setting it up kind of decently from the factory IMO. They didn't spend any of that money on fancy woods, finishes, no tremolo, no active electronics...etc and I'm pretty sure 90% of it is CNC machined by robots so yeah not much in the way of labor either.

If it was a $200-$400 guitar I could see issues like it had but not so much on a $1000 guitar. And yeah I know $1000 isn't high end $'s for a guitar but it ain't cheap either. There are probably tons of guitars I could of bought in that price range or less that would of been way better if I shopped around and did some research. It was like 10yrs ago but I paid way less for my Japanese made Jackson Dinky which came with a Floyd and a hard shell case that was fine out of the box and didn't have any issues like that.

Overall it was just a dumb impulse purchase on my part since I wanted a fixed bridge guitar and liked the simple look it has. But basically I just bought a $200 Squire and paid a $800 premium to put the Charvel name on it. So next time I'll go to a shop and buy instead of ordering something on a whim and spend my money a little wiser.

Hell I should bought a trem blocker for my Jackson and spent that $1k and met all you guys out at Ray's for the weekend LOL that place is a blast.

Caveat Emptor 😉
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The $1k price point is a tough one. I think at that price you’re best bets are the Korean made Ibanez, LTD, or Schecters. The Japanese guitars are the new “Made in America” guitars, prices are over $2k. It only took this long for people to realize most of the craftsmanship there rivals what comes out of the US shops. US guitar prices are now crazy, who makes them, the elven craftsman of Valinor? The best guitar I’ve ever played is still my late-80’s Japanese 540R. I have an ESP E-II on order since last year, I’ll let you know if it lives up to the hype.
 
Captain Brainstorm said:
The $1k price point is a tough one. I think at that price you’re best bets are the Korean made Ibanez, LTD, or Schecters. The Japanese guitars are the new “Made in America” guitars, prices are over $2k. It only took this long for people to realize most of the craftsmanship there rivals what comes out of the US shops. US guitar prices are now crazy, who makes them, the elven craftsman of Valinor? The best guitar I’ve ever played is still my late-80’s Japanese 540R. I have an ESP E-II on order since last year, I’ll let you know if it lives up to the hype.
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The Japanese builders are best on the planet IMO. US Built guitars are nothing more than a name and ego thing.
 
Wow that was awesome. So many cool guitars and that stand inside it belt sander at 5-6mins is nuts! My old boss used to work at the Kramer factory when it was in Neptune, I wish it was still there probably would be a fun place to work. The Martin guitar factory in Nazareth, PA is a fun trip. It's a great tour you get to walk around the whole place like that and it's free if your ever near Nazareth. Only down side is it's Monday thru Friday only.
 
FastFreddy said:
Wow that was awesome. So many cool guitars and that stand inside it belt sander at 5-6mins is nuts! My old boss used to work at the Kramer factory when it was in Neptune, I wish it was still there probably would be a fun place to work. The Martin guitar factory in Nazareth, PA is a fun trip. It's a great tour you get to walk around the whole place like that and it's free if your ever near Nazareth. Only down side is it's Monday thru Friday only.
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It's still there. Just down the road from my house. Wow, the history that was made there.

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FastFreddy said:
Got my replacement DK24, much better than the first one but I'm still not too impressed with Charvel's QC.

I had to put a small shim under the neck to angle it and stop the saddles from bottoming out. Action out of the box was .110 low E with the saddle bottomed out!, .09 high E with about .012 relief and it still had a ton of fret buzz from about 10th fret up to the 24th fret. After shimming the neck, leveling the frets, recrowning and polishing them I got it down to .065 low E, .045 high E, .006 relief and the saddles now have some adjustment range up and down. Just a tiny hint of buzz now here and there so not perfect but WAY better than stock.

The stock output jack makes a ton of noise/looses connection if you just barely move the cable at all so I picked up a Pure Tone jack to replace it with that I'll solder in tomorrow to hopefully fix that. I also replaced the stock plastic nut with a Earvana compensated nut and got the action at the first fret down to about half of what it was out of the box. Oiled and cleaned the fretboard, put on a new set of 10-52 strings strecthed, tuned and intonated. A lot of work for a BRAND NEW $1K guitar if you ask me, but all in all it was a fun little 4 hour project. Now I just need to start practicing and playing more....a whole lot more!

View attachment 207596
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So I played one of these in GC last week with the maple board and Floyd Rose, 22-frets. It was nice, but I think $1100 is a bit much for a pretty much bare-bones Korean super-strat. For around $700, maybe, which is the price of a similarly spec'd Schecter probably made in the same factory.
 
Captain Brainstorm said:
So I played one of these in GC last week with the maple board and Floyd Rose, 22-frets. It was nice, but I think $1100 is a bit much for a pretty much bare-bones Korean super-strat. For around $700, maybe, which is the price of a similarly spec'd Schecter probably made in the same factory.
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Mine was made in Mexico. I'm happy with it now that I did the work I did on it but it's deffinetely over priced for what it is. I was actually going to buy a $1800 Schecter Keith Merrow KM-6 MKIII Artist but got tired of waiting for them to be in stock. They also have a $900 bolt on neck version KM-6 Standard I was looking at but again no one had one.
 
FastFreddy said:
Mine was made in Mexico. I'm happy with it now that I did the work I did on it but it's deffinetely over priced for what it is. I was actually going to buy a $1800 Schecter Keith Merrow KM-6 MKIII Artist but got tired of waiting for them to be in stock. They also have a $900 bolt on neck version KM-6 Standard I was looking at but again no one had one.
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I believe the DK24 is made on the same line as the Player Strat, which is an awesome guitar.
 
I'm not a guitar player (played the drums in college and I've been playing the bass for the past year or so), but curious if there's any love for Guthrie Govan here?



I was semi-aware of him through his work with The Aristocrats, but hadn't occurred that he's played on a couple of one of my favorite artist's, Steven Wilson, albums.
 
ebarker9 said:
I'm not a guitar player (played the drums in college and I've been playing the bass for the past year or so), but curious if there's any love for Guthrie Govan here?



I was semi-aware of him through his work with The Aristocrats, but hadn't occurred that he's played on a couple of one of my favorite artist's, Steven Wilson, albums.
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Guthrie isn't human. Watch Rick Beato's Episode about him.
 
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