Okay wise ones here's the deal. My 1st guitar is a Schecter Omen 6. I've had it about 6 weeks & have been loving it. I'm just working out some blues progressions & the chords seem to be coming together reasonably well. Today I had the chance to get my hands on the Ibanez mentioned above & I couldn't believe the difference. 22 v 24 frets creates more room for the fingers. The strings seemed a lot more forgiving & the bluesy sound was supreme. It felt quite a bit easier to move around on. I play the Schecter and anything else I may pick up through a Vox AD15VT (modeling amp)
Now I have a dilemma. I'm a 70's, 80's rock kind of guy. Typical 40 something I guess. Like some crunch but I don't have a great desire to burn off any huge metal riffs...think Beatles up through Doobies. I'm not at all unhappy with the Schecter.
The Ibanez is pretty flexible across the sonic plane, so it appears I have a couple choices.
1) Take back the Schecter & swap for the Ibanez (I'm still in my 'grace' period)
2) Forget the Ibanez (however, I really like the hollow body sound) the Schecter covers all my options.
3) Indulge...the bonus check is in the mail & the difference in tone justifies having both. (How would you explain that to your wife?)
So...any and all thoughts are welcome. You're all a great resource. Waiting anxiously for your input.
DP
get both and have your wife read the article in the Beginner Q&A
"Hope for all us old beginners"
that should explain it. :D
Thanks MM, I like it. However, technically speaking is there too much overlap between the two? I don't want to duplicate $$ on the same type animal. I can see the differences but...I don't have any great experience to fall back on.
Funny how this is coming up right now. I have a Schecter C1Plus and started looking at the Artcore series, specifically the AF75, but after seeing it in person I found the AS83 to be much more of what I was after. It's a little bit more than the AF series, but the tone more than makes up for it...IMO. I play a lot of stuff above the 12-15 fret and am used to the double cut of my Schecter and realized I didn't like the way you have to reach, but that's just me. I guess I'll never have a Les Paul, unless it's a double cut. :roll:
I'm also looking to pick up the same amp, my wife is not happy at all. Third guitar in less than nine months. :twisted:
I started from a different perspective, and ended up with an Artcore.
My initial approach was to look at ES335-style semi hollows, because that was the sound I wanted. (Bit of blues, early British Invasion, etc.)
But I knew that LPs and Strats can also give good bluesy tones, so I tried everything in my price range (under US$350.) Played the Omen 6, too, but concluded it was too "modern rock" for my taste. Really disliked the small fret spacing, especially as I was coming from a classical acoustic background. Good guitar, just not right for me.
The Artcores have a nice warm tone, and I felt they were better made than the comparably priced Epis and low-end Gretsch models. I ended up with the Artcore AXD81, which is the LP-shaped single-F-hole version of TimL's AS83. It's got a slightly edgier tone than the bigger guitar, but still has the characteristics of a semi-hollow.
Bottom line: you're really comparing two very different animals! If your playing style is broad enough you'll probably want both. (And then a Tele, too!) Otherwise, with your modeling amp (I use the AD30VT), you might find that one guitar is enough to get all the sounds you want, in which case you should pick that one that "feels" best to you.
"Everybody got to elevate from the norm."
Thanks guys, the info is much appreciated. Here's the latest...I stumbled back into GC last week and low and behold the Artcores are marked down 20%. I suppose now the only issue is to go with the trem or no trem. Any experience with these?
dp
They'll probably have a bigsby style trem on them. I would take a tuner in and get those strings perfect then mess around with it, see how out of wack things get.
-Metaellihead
