Re: EVH Striped Series
I ran home during my lunch hour to open her up and play her a bit. She doesn't come with a case or gig bag, just the cardboard box. Though packed nicely, I was very lucky she came through undamaged since it was packed like a $99 starcaster from Best Buy. She arrived by Fed Ex, I'm lucky it wasn't UPS. Here's my brief review:
1) ALOT of guitar for the money. The neck, fretwork, fit and finish are better than any Charvel USA Promod I've played, and even better than my EBMM Axis that I just had refretted with jumbo frets. She arrived almost in tune, with the low E a little flat- the guitar comes tunes to Eb. Frets were highly polished, like glass. They look and feel like stainless (jumbo), though the specs don't indicate stainless- it's just an excellent fret job. The guitar played like butter out of the cardboard box, much better than any Wolfgang Special I've seen in the stores, and even better than my EBMM. Setup was perfect, it really doesn't need one.
2) Finish- this is no decal. The finish is better than my Charvel pro mods, a very high, mirror gloss. You can see masking lines here and there through the clearcoat, so the guitar was in fact hand striped, no decal. The shade of red of course changes depending on the lighting, but looks better than the red on their web site.
3)Hardware- the EVH tuners are solid and feel like Schallers. The trem is clearly one of the Korean made Floyds, the same that Charvel and Gibson is using, as the trem arm has the lighter feel of the Korean vs. German made OFR- but still feels extremely solid.
4) Nut- they got the nut height right. I don't see any shims like on my EBMM. My Charvel came with a shelf too high, this one is perfect.
5) Neck shape- more comfortable than my Charvel pro mod.
6) Tone- UNBELIEVABLE. I have an EBMM Axis, and have put EVH Wolfgang pickups in my other guitars. Harmonics just fly off this guitar, it cleans up nicely, it gets a vintage EVH tone really nicely. Somehow they are just able to ooze a lot more harmonics out of this guitar with the quality of the build.
I like it a lot more than the Wolfgang Special. The wider neck, bigger frets are easier to play, it came with a much better setup and fretwork than Specials I've seen.
My only complaint- and it's minor. While it did come with a perfect setup, to get the Floyd to sit flush with the top, the Floyd is angled back slightly toward the back, rather than parallel with the body. Many Charvels are set up this way, though I would've liked to see it sit flush and parallel like my EBMM Axis. However, the feel of the trem is a lot smoother than my EBMM Axis, so maybe this is a tradeoff. It does not effect tuning at all, it stays in tune great. In order to get the action on my EBMM Axis as low as this guitar, neck shimming as well as a shim were needed under the back of the Floyd. This guitar needs no neck shim, though I may put a slight shim under the Floyd so it sits parallel with the body.
EDIT- I took the neck off to inspect the neck pocket. There's no shim, just a very accurately routed angled neck pocket for the Floyd. I thought I saw a shim- turns out there was some spray over paint in the pocket, raising the neck by a grain of sand. I sanded the paint flush to make good neck to body contact, and now the guitar resonates even better
Overall, a great guitar, and better than the Charvel Pro Mods- USA and Japan, that I've played. The Mexicans seem to know what they're doing
