Chapman Guitars at NAMM

skunkwerx

I also own a chapman. An ml-2 (second run). 

I bought it because at the time for the price of the mk2 range, it was the most bang for buck new. Around £450?

Actually, I initially bought the same model but second hand from Andertons to ‘try’. That day I sat and played for hours like I hadnt done in years. 

Dunno what ignited me except for the guitar itself. 

I also bought a Prs se Tremonti (the base model with wraparound bridge in vintage cherry red) for about £399. 

Both solid body single cuts with set necks and dual humbuckers. 

Pretty good base for comparison no?
I’m no expert and I’ll try and be brutal where I can. 



I like both of them but the Prs would go sooner than the chapman. 
Purely based on the prs having smaller frets, a thicker neck and a bulkier neck joint. 

Their general build qualities to me, appear the same. 

The Prs is a 2015 model, the headstock says its made by PT Wildwood Indonesia. 

The chapman is Korean, I ‘think’ world guitars. 

I presumed all ranges of prs se’s were made by world guitars and in Korea, the same factory as chapmans, but alas, my prs wasnt, otherwise this would have been an even better comparison.


Lets compare compadres. 
I’ll list the specs that matter but omit stuff like radius’ because Its late and As both these guitars are long discontinued, I bet the internet will fail
me. 

The guitars: 

A second run (mk2) Chapman ml-2 in ‘sanded natural oil stain’:
Maple set neck with Ebony board. 
Satin/sanded natural finish to rear of neck.
Mahogany body, appears to me as a 2 piece.
Extra jumbo frets
Tusq nut
Tonepros bridge
Grover machineheads
String thru body
2 ‘guitarnivore’ pickups with coil split. 
2 volume 1 tone, metal knobs.
Comes with gigbag.

Prs se Tremonti 2014/15 model: 
Vintage Cherry Red Gloss finish.
Slim mahogany body
White plastic binding
Mahogany wide fat neck carve with plastic binding
Set neck
Bird inlays
Rosewood board
Medium frets
Plastic nut
Nickel hardware
Prs designed se treble and bass pups
2 vol, 2 tone plastic speedknobs
Comes with gig bag. 


Build:
Er, pretty much on par from my inexperienced eyes. I’ll note the bad parts later though, you can decide if theyre build quality or QC issues. 

Comfort:
The chapman is heavy. Its big old body to blame. Not overly unweildy but its heavy and certainly slips on my lap being naturally finished, compared to a little added grip of poly finishing. Maybe its not the most ergonomic lower carve though?
Its neck is lovely, not too thick, not too flat, not too thin. Its sanded back isnt grippy at all. However my natural oils have basically fucking oiled it making it a finished neck now. But its not grippy. 
Upper fret access is great, the neck join smooth and unimposing. 
Playing it is nice, no sharp fret ends out of the box, after a few lemon oil cleans and a bit of playing the board and frets slickened up some. I do however have skin issues which make fretboards really grippy for me. 



The Prs is light, and not just in comparison to the chapman. 
Its body is a slim version of the Se tremonti which is a step up in price from my base model. However unlike its bigger brother, this version has a wide fat neck carve which adds weight back in, and I imagine tone and sustain too.

Its neck is also lovely, thick without being too much for me. Again no issues with fret sprout or flash out of the box. 
Upper fret access isnt as nice as the chapmans, due to a bulkier neck join, I imagine due to the slim body.. 
Its comfy to play, comfy to sit with, hold on a strap for hours, 
The rosewood board and smaller frets don’t seem as slick and fast to me. The back of the neck is gloss finished. Again, not as slick. But not overly grippy. 
 

The finish: 
 The prs wins by a small margin BUT, I’m comparing a natural oiled chapman vs a gloss/painted finished Prs. The chapman being natural means its easier to see joins etc. That could be the case for all natural finished guitars though. 
The glossy prs is a fucking nightmare for attracting dust and showing off fingerprints. But thats hardly the guitars fault. 

The glossy prs finish looks fantastic. You can kind of tell the clearcoat is thick, but it looks like its over a translucent red stained body. You can see the wood grain etc. When polished its lovely reflective, like looking through glass to the wood beneath. The headstock is finished the same with the model, make and artist painted/stuck on below the topcoat.

The natural sanded oiled chapman also looks sweet. In certain lights you can really see its grains reflect different shades of golden brown. Almost striped it is. The top looks much better than the back for this effect. 
It saps up my skin oils though. But as said previously I have skin issues and constantly moisturise so this could be me rather than the guitar. Just being fair!
I notice that below the treble strings, where my fingers rest on the body while playing/picking, has become oily/waxy. Unsure how to get it out, polish didnt work, so I’ve left it. It doesnt look overly bad. 
The headstock appears to have a veneer over its front, so it matches the mahogany colour of the body. 


Hardware:
 The chapman wins. Grovers and a tonepros bridge with individually adjustable saddles vs the prs wraparound compensated bridge and tailpiece. 
The compensated wraparound tailpiece on the Tremonti may limit versatility, as you might find with higher gauge strings or lower tunings, that you can’t accurately intonate across all 6 strings.  

The Prs’ nickel hardware tarnishes within weeks of cleaning it which pisses me off. But its a feature of the nickel hardware. Prs reckons the makeup of the metal in the hardware enhances the tone. 

I’ll talk about nuts here too. 
The chapman comes with a tusq nut, which has been finished just fine and appears cut correctly. 
The Prs’ plastic nut is just that. But it works ok. More on this in the bad points... 

Electrics: 
Probably made by the same people. 
The Chapman has 2 ‘chapman’ pickups, called ‘guitarnivores’. They are humbucking coil splittable direct mounted pickups. 

The Prs has a pair of Prs designed Se bass and Se treble hunbuckers. No coil split, and they are mounted to plastic mounting rings. 

The chapman has nice metal knobs, but the Tremonti has fairly nice looking speedknobs. 

The chapman offers a coil split option with one global tone control, wheras the Prs gives you no coil splitting but offers individual volume and tone controls, in the same way a les paul would. 

The Chapmans 3 way pickup switch is located next to the volume controls. 
The Prs’ switch is on the upper bout, ala les paul. 

Wiring under the back plate is standard in this price range. Probably cheap and with excess lengths cable tied up. 

Neither guitars pots have given me problems in over a year of use on the chapman, and 3 years the tremonti. 

Pointless in my opinion discussing tone, because: 

1. Its subjective
2. I’m really shite at playing
3. I only play at home through a katana

But, for what its worth, presuming I’d hear a difference through a 50watt katana at bedroom levels, I ‘think’ the prs pickups sound a little better in general. The chapmans are ok, not the worst I’ve played, certainly not the best, but I cant say much because of the above.

skunkwerx

Part 2: 

The bad stuff Chapman: 

1. Chapman is noisy. Buzzy, stops when you touch metal etc. Feline actually looked over this for me last year and noted with his electric proddy probe machine (what they called?) that in places within the control cavity, the conductive paint isnt actually conducting. 

So it could definately do with some silencing. Screening, a pickup change and a rewire probably. 

Don’t get me wrong, its not audible when playing, but when idling on high gain its picking up interference a little more than the Prs. 

2. Its high E grover machinehead is fucking bollocks. Its string hole is obviously too rounded, because if I string up normally the string just keeps slipping out of it and unwrapping itself when nearing pitch. 

The solution is to either use a locking wrap method (1 over 2-3 under) or to simply slot the string straight thru and ensure it has 7 odd winds around the post. 

Ok, maybe thats grovers fault, maybe its chapmans for not picking up on it. 

Its annoying though. 

The bad stuff Prs: 

1. Its nut was obviously installed by Stevie Wonder. 

Its like its been installed as a block, the slots cut to depth and given one or two passes with some paper as filing down. 

Its excess height is silly above the strings, its corners have been filed only to stop you cutting yourself on them. No effort to shape it at all! 

2. I personally dislike the tarnishing hardware. Unsure if it looks and feels cheap to me, but it doesnt feel nice to turn a machinehead that just feels like its leaving a residue on your fretting fingers. It does clean off easily though and as far as I know just appears to be a side effect of prs using nickel in the hardware. 

3. Its poxy switch. Its gone once, so took it to grizzly who fixed it. Presume for what I paid that he just remade some solder joins. 

Its intermittantly not worked in 1 position since. So, cheap switch. 

Hardly a huge complaint. 

Maybe that gives a fairly unbiased comparison, albeit from a guy who has only moderate home use experience in guitars. 

Its pretty irrelevant now anyway that I believe chapman moved their latest range of production to indonesia. Quite possibly to the PT wildwood factory that my Indonesian Prs came out of. Maybe? 

I’ll be honest I dont know why I wrote this other than to compare on ‘paper’ for myself as well. Its not like I’m comparing a 2k custom job to a £4k chapman..  

Jez6345789

Skunkwerx
thanks for the comparison, although you would expect the Chapman to do better being from World instruments where the SE range is made and Indo where the PRS Se standards are made. It’s not really an egg to eggs comparison.

i keep hearing the words marketing geniuses and stuff been thrown around this thread re Andertons and Chappers. 

ISTR the first Chapmans were made in China and not very good in terms of quality. Which sort lead them to copy the PRS model by going to World. I reckon most of the donkey work in terms of getting World up to scratch on the fit and finish had been done years before by the PRS ESP teams. Since then Chapman has pretty much channeled PRS model, standards done in Indo mid range at World and the recent addition at the top with the UK made. not exactly genius, video format pretty much blokey loosely based on top gear style.

i do wonder how long it will be before competitors at the Chapman price points say to the Captain you want to sell your products and our products you want us to pay to be on Andertons Tv. I am told manufactures now have to pay and provide product to be on there. Which in terms of how big the channel is and how much it costs to produce is probably fair. But I think some people will feel the lines are getting crossed in terms of Andertons being a channel to drive sales. when Andertons and Chappers are selling against them.

bingefeller

guitarfishbay said:

Here you go, over 95,000 views at the time of posting.



Over 50,000 views of this one.

octatonic was at the Chapman booth?

OnTheHunt

It's an interesting one.  This Chapman fellow seems to polarise opinion, but personally hadn't much heard of him or his guitars until I came across this thread, although having watched the two clips linked above I now recognise him from a few Andertons clips I've watched reviewing kit.  In that workshop clip he comes across as a decent enough bloke passionate about his thing, so fair play to him.  The guitars do look good, as much as one can tell from a video.  Would I pay £3.5k for one?  I am happy, and have many times, to pay that kind of money for a guitar without Gibson/PRS/etc on the headstock, knowing in advance resale would be awful - but, I've always had some assurance up front, whether that be on builder reputation and/or the fact I've spec'd the thing, that it'll be 'right', and those guitars don't tend to leave.  But in this instance, I'd say no.  Sounds like it's effectively 'off the shelf' aside from choosing a finish and there are many more custom options available cheaper.  Made In Britain also holds no sway for me - I've played excellent and crap guitars from around the planet, a good guitar is a good guitar so I'm not fussed on origin.

They do look interesting though - £1k cheaper in the USA so I'd be inclined in future to keep an eye out for one second hand over there and take advantage of that poor resale.

EricTheWeary

I had some delay pedal demoes on. This is a very badly done demo but I thought ooh what a lovely looking guitar. Not one of the new ones but turns out to be a Chapman. More tasteful than I’d given them credit for. 

https://youtu.be/D9-l5QdL3eQ

Strat54

Does that one have a tummy cut............

darthed1981

I've always liked the look of the Cap10 America.

I'd buy one if I ever saw it cheap.

rico

How much chap could a chapman chap if a chapman could chap man?

Daved756

rico said:

How much chap could a chapman chap if a chapman could chap man?

6 

mbe

rico said:

How much chat could a chapman chat if a chapman could chat man?

ftfy

hendrixisgod85

Not sure if anyone mentioned this but the price is inherently suspicious to me, a thou neck explor should not cost the same and a bolt on neck tele. the labor in making those 2 guitar is completely different. I mean i dont wish ill on Rob at all, i wish him every success he has after made a him a nice little living out of making guitars, i think we'd all be happy with doing what he does but this is a frankly ridiculous and is bound to not do so well.

guitarfishbay

skunkwerx said:

The bad stuff Prs: 

1. Its nut was obviously installed by Stevie Wonder. 

Its like its been installed as a block, the slots cut to depth and given one or two passes with some paper as filing down. 

Its excess height is silly above the strings, its corners have been filed only to stop you cutting yourself on them. No effort to shape it at all! 

This is by design to my knowledge.

The higher sides mean it's basically impossible for the string to ever come out of the nut when doing huge bends... though rare it can happen if the height is less.  I personally don't consider it to be an issue, the US guitars also have high sides on the nut.

thegummy

guitarfishbay said:

skunkwerx said:

The bad stuff Prs: 

1. Its nut was obviously installed by Stevie Wonder. 

Its like its been installed as a block, the slots cut to depth and given one or two passes with some paper as filing down. 

Its excess height is silly above the strings, its corners have been filed only to stop you cutting yourself on them. No effort to shape it at all! 

This is by design to my knowledge.

The higher sides mean it's basically impossible for the string to ever come out of the nut when doing huge bends... though rare it can happen if the height is less.  I personally don't consider it to be an issue, the US guitars also have high sides on the nut.

I've wondered if there's any advantage to filling down the "peaks" between the nut slots other than to make it look nice?

wizbit81

So for that price you could have almost any top builder in the world build you a guitar (excluding Doug from Blackmachine and Rick Toone) You could have the finest exotic woods, any body shape, perfect planned balance, a good consultation on wood selection for your purposes, any finish, etc. etc. Or you could have something built by someone who they won't tell you who it is, the specs are fixed to someone else's preferences, it's not got a luthier's branding on it, just the branding of a cheapass company known for low quality shite marketed by a couple of the most annoying clowns ever to grace the internet. One of whom can't even play a blues lick right and knows absolutely nothing about playing guitar or music in general. Hmmm let me think on this....

Plectrum

wizbit81 said:

So for that price you could have almost any top builder in the world build you a guitar (excluding Doug from Blackmachine and Rick Toone) You could have the finest exotic woods, any body shape, perfect planned balance, a good consultation on wood selection for your purposes, any finish, etc. etc. Or you could have something built by someone who they won't tell you who it is, the specs are fixed to someone else's preferences, it's not got a luthier's branding on it, just the branding of a cheapass company known for low quality shite marketed by a couple of the most annoying clowns ever to grace the internet. One of whom can't even play a blues lick right and knows absolutely nothing about playing guitar or music in general. Hmmm let me think on this....

If you could spare a bit of time to read most of this thread you'll find out that we do know who the luthier is

Budgie

wizbit81 said:

So for that price you could have almost any top builder in the world build you a guitar (excluding Doug from Blackmachine and Rick Toone) You could have the finest exotic woods, any body shape, perfect planned balance, a good consultation on wood selection for your purposes, any finish, etc. etc. Or you could have something built by someone who they won't tell you who it is, the specs are fixed to someone else's preferences, it's not got a luthier's branding on it, just the branding of a cheapass company known for low quality shite marketed by a couple of the most annoying clowns ever to grace the internet. One of whom can't even play a blues lick right and knows absolutely nothing about playing guitar or music in general. Hmmm let me think on this....

I'm getting a feeling you're not in the market for one then. Crikey! 

wizbit81

Budgie that was mild. Absolutely ridiculous situation. 
Plectrum old chap, I read the first 6 pages and then the last two before making my comment, I also just scanned another couple in the middle and still haven't seen so if you already know and could spare a min to reiterate it would be appreciated. I'm not going to read line by line 13 pages of comments hunting for it.

Plectrum

wizbit81 said:

Budgie that was mild. Absolutely ridiculous situation. 
Plectrum old chap, I read the first 6 pages and then the last two before making my comment, I also just scanned another couple in the middle and still haven't seen so if you already know and could spare a min to reiterate it would be appreciated. I'm not going to read line by line 13 pages of comments hunting for it.

Someone identified the workshop as Sims in Kent.

Wolfetone

This is what I could buy for the same money. It's a 1974 Custom in age related condition and an original case.....

https://i.imgur.com/LaUF1Ac.jpg