Simple design for people who play instead of twiddle knobs.
Written: Mar 29 '03 (Updated Mar 29 '03)
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Product Rating:
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Pros: Grover tuners, Perfect neck, flat fretboard, simple switching, tune-o-matic bridge makes tuning easy and stable.
Cons: Not much...cheesy headstock logo, a few rejects out there.
The Bottom Line: Factor few negatives with great price and you have a guitar that will put the pawn shops out of the guitar business. Play before buying or anticipate making minor adjustments.
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| brandobean's Full Review: Schecter Omen 5 |
Omen 6 was entering my dreams the night after I played one at my local Guitar Center. I laughed at the silly sounding Schecter name, but after trying what they had to offer, I was impressed.
Woods
I picked up the Basswood bodied Omen 6 because it had the walnut finish and I am a sucker for natural finished wood. The finish on this model is obviously satin polyurethane. It is stained basswood to look like dark walnut. The body is 2 pieces of wood. It is carved on the top like a Les Paul, but has shape of a Stratocaster. It has a flat fret board that is a bit more comfortable to me than my Strat's curved radius. The neck is maple, the fret board is rosewood and unplugged it has a nice deep sound to it. It also comes in blue and black. All colors were acceptable and the guitar will not look dated in a few years. The neck has a joint near the headstock that angles the tuning pegs like a Gibson. The neck feels as if Schaller found a really great neck and put it on a cloning machine like Larrivee does to make necks. I mean this as a compliment.
Hardware
If ever there was a canned sales pitch at Guitar Center this is one, "It has Grover Tuners." These tuners have sold many a cheap guitar. In this case the guitar is crafted very tightly and the lack of a tremolo really helps sustain and tuning. I bought this specifically because I was tired of my strat of 10 years. I discovered not all guitars require frequent tuning or pampering. I was correct. I enjoy the tune-o-matic bridge's ease for adjusting intonation and action. If I had to choose between 2 guitars: one with tremolo or this hard tail tune-o-matic, I would go for this one. It is less to deal with if you break a string. I am not Jimi Hendrix and I am not adept at tuning as I play. I am a do-it-yourself type of person. I always do my own setups on my guitars when it is mechanical hardware. The Graphtech nut is pretty slick and is nice. I would actually try to buy one as a replacement if it wore out. Grover tuners seem nice. This is my first experience with them and I already like them more than my locking Schallers. The strap buttons are the standard fare. If you are hard on your strap and it falls off often try Schaller strap locks. They are great.
Electronics
I liked the simplicity of the controls. There is not much clutter on this guy. I know some people would prefer a separate volume and tone control for each pickup, but I think that is a waste of pots, caps, and wires. This only has one volume and one tone. The pickup selector is done right! It is a 3-way switch like a Les Paul, but placed where you would find on a strat (right by the volume knob). I was a switch freak who got tired of having switches for 10 plus tone combinations I never used. The pickups are series-wired hum buckers that are in parallel when selected together (individual hum buckers always being in series). I really missed the single coil sound of my neck pickup on my strat so I dropped in a push pull volume switch and in the out position the coils are tapped. It is a simple and useful mod (if you do it right you can get the 2 inside or outside coils to do parallel like a strat and do hum cancel). I also ended up dropping a Fishman Powerbridge Tune-o-matic. I had to either get rid of a knob or drill a hole. I got rid of my tone knob and there rests the new volume for the power bridge.
What I was trying to accomplish
I despise glowing reviews of crap that people have only demoed or owned for a short time. I prefer to read about why that person bought the item, what the person was trying to accomplish, and how the party concluded. Here is my story:
I was looking to spend up to $600 or so. I wanted something to take out of the house and not worry that it would get a scratch or something. I was dead set on the Nashville Power Telecaster because of the stock Fishman pickup. Then, I found that I could order a Tune-o-matic Fishman bridge. I bought it. I wanted excellent dirty sounds and beautiful clean sounds. The powerbridge helps most of the clean sounds get out. Without it the guitar is acceptable as a clean player, but better if you mod it for the coil tap.
The pickups are nice. The neck is acceptable for clean Jazz leads, but isn't ideal. Position 2 has both hum buckers on at the same time that is good for a full rhythm or funk sound. The bridge pickup sounds treble and sometimes raspy clean, but shreds when dirty. All 3 pickup positions shred when dirty. The dirty sounds are good and are not too muddy. I am the kind of idiot who has been known to swap out pickups to Duncan's Hottie-tottie-ta-ta's. It has proven to be a waste of my $$$ and solder. These pickups don't really make my dreams come true, but they are B material. How good they sound dirty makes up for how mediocre they sound clean. Since they are hum buckers you can brighten the neck up with chorus or something when playing clean. This is a good shredder guitar. I have spent hours playing it since I bought it. I actually do not miss the tremolo.
I do not feel too guilty banging this guitar around, but at the same time I do not feel like this is a cheap or throw-away guitar at all. It has impressive quality period! It has amazing quality for the price. Too many people say this guitar is excellent bang for the buck. It is, but that might lead one to think this guitar is simply "pretty good." No, it is excellent by any measure of guitars in the Guitar Center. I preferred it over the $2500 Gibsons, All Ibanez, Fender, Music man, Epiphone or PRS. In fact this guitar's value can only be compared to PRS. If PRS put out an import line, it would be like this. This is coming from a Fender fan. I am not partial to PRS and will probably never own one.
I have used this guitar to record for over a year and I don't miss the hum of my strat at all. I do miss the clean tones from my strat and the coil tap mod helps, but it gets no cigar. I expect to gig with this guitar and enjoy it for many years to come.
Thoughts I had after owning it for 6 months.
Basically this is a Strat body with Les Paul pickups. I have read on the Schecter site they are 95% a Seymour Duncan 59 in the neck and a JB in the bridge. There are no adjusting screw poles on pickups, but I'd keep them flat anyhow so I didn't care. The jumbo frets are a change from my Fender Strat staple, but I like them. 24 frets are great after only having 21.
When you do your first string change tighten the tuners with a wrench on the headstock. Don't do it too hard and stress out the wood. Mine were loose, but I noticed no buzzing. This is a tip for any new guitar with these type of tuners.
I received no extras with this guitar. I bought the thing and didn't even get a manual.
The neck on this thing is like it was made just for me. I realize this is the bottom of the line for Schecter, but it is planets away from anything Fender or Yamaha in quality. Between a MIM Fender or Squier and this you would be a fool to spend the same or more on an inferior guitar.
One might call this a beginner’s guitar, but it is actually just a no-nonsense guitar. The action was perfect right off the shelf and it was always in tune. Sometimes my case bumps the tuners and that is about the only time I need to tune. Even after visiting it in Guitar Center for 2 weeks as I debated before buying I kept saying to myself, "This thing is bottom end, get the one with the set neck or the roach on it." I just fell in love with this thing. I LOVE the neck on this thing. I may never buy a Fender again. I think I have been converted or something. The action was a bit higher compared compared to the low buzzing action of the more expensive Ibanez guitars. I almost got the set neck model, but I liked this one so much and it was so cheap that I thought I would be dumb to pass this up. I compared it to all of the Les Pauls in the store, but I preferred the strat like body of this model.
Reliability
I beat the tar out of everything I own. I am the kind of guy who buys a pair of Doc martin shoes because it is cheaper over a 3-year period to buy the tough shoes as opposed to buying 12 pairs of cheaper shoes. I was looking for durability. All of the Schecter guitars look as though they have been built to the same standards. I was weary of the "Made in Korea" sticker on the neck so I played it for 2 hours on my last visit just to make sure. Finally my wife got mad and told me to hurry. While she left to get some lunch I knew I was lying to myself if I thought I was going to get a better deal from a big name guitar company. I finally said no thank you the deceptive 5-piece alder under 2-piece veneer Sunburst Fender Nashville Power Telecaster. It was a good guitar, but not worth the $700.00 tag. The neck to body attachment is what sold me. It is tight and doesn't move a millimeter when bending heavy. Drop D tuning is pretty good with minimal tuning adjustments needing to be made.
Perceived value
I feel that this guitar is a good value even if you end up paying full MSRP which I think is $400.00 or so. $260.00 - $300.00 seems to be the median price. It fits into strat cases so no worries for transport and no crazy shaped cases to buy.
It may be a poor man's Paul Reed Smith, but I am laughing all the way to the bank. It has a nice Gibson sound with nice fender body shape. The neck shape reminds me of a nice Taylor acoustic, but with Jumbo Ibanez frets. Schecter is definitely blazing its own trail.
Final thought
These guitars are very consistent and I would feel comfortable buying one online or sight unseen. I recently found one in the store that had a bad volume pot (easily fixed) and sticky tuners. I recommend trying before you buy, but if you can't then just feel confident that you are getting a nice basic setup that might need a bit of attention. I would rather replace a pot or a tuner than find that the woodwork was done poorly. You should expect to find no nasty workmanship surprises, but like any Guitar manufacturer second quality pieces do make it through. I wouldn’t worry about it with this guitar it really warms up to you.
Recommended:
Yes
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Epinions.com ID:
brandobean
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Member: brando brando
Location: Utah
Reviews written: 64
Trusted by: 11 members
About Me:
I am compiling Utah musicians to release an album on my site soon.
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