NGD - another Schecter (now returned for refund)

skullfunkerry

fretmeister said:

I think most guitars have a slight deadspot somewhere.
Quite difficult to avoid with string instruments - always going to get a frequency node somewhere along the string length.

I have heard of that before, but I've never experienced it. I'll see how the next one is...

Universal8 said:

skullfunkerry said:

Second update: Peach are sending the guitar back to Schecter for them to repair or replace. Not sure how lon gI'll be without it, but if the dead spot's gone when it comes back then I don't really mind... it's not like it's my only guitar!

Couldn’t they just refund you on such a new guitar ?

I guess so, but I do really like the guitar, so I'm happy to get it fixed/replaced, plus I'd rather Peach kept the sale

lysander

Interesting to know, did it just need a fret dress or was it more than that ?

hollywoodrox

I really like the sun. Alley super shredder ones 

Moloch

That's really attractive. Schecter Diamond Series have always been under-appreciated gems, but if they can keep putting in that kind of work on the appearances then they could well shake that under-appreciated tag.

skullfunkerry

lysander said:

Interesting to know, did it just need a fret dress or was it more than that ?

It didn't sound like it was choking; the note just died really quickly - it sounded like a noise gate was cutting off the delay. I'm not sure what they did at Peach, but it didn't improve it much, hence returning it. I'll update once I've got it (or another one) back  

skullfunkerry

hollywoodrox said:

I really like the sun. Alley super shredder ones 

Me too. I tried the Telecaster style one a while back and I liked it a lot

lysander

This review made me a bit worried about the QC on these guitars unfortunately : 
https://www.sweetwater.com/store/detail/Reap6IB--schecter-reaper-6-satin-inferno-burst/reviews

Bad fretwork and more importantly strings too close to the edge due to bridge placement or neck angle is not acceptable at this price range really when some other brands get these things right at half the price

Mid range Schecter used to have a reputation for high quality when they were Korean made, I guess the Indonesian factories are still hit and miss...

skullfunkerry

lysander said:

This review made me a bit worried about the QC on these guitars unfortunately : 
https://www.sweetwater.com/store/detail/Reap6IB--schecter-reaper-6-satin-inferno-burst/reviews

Bad fretwork and more importantly strings too close to the edge due to bridge placement or neck angle is not acceptable at this price range really when some other brands get these things right at half the price

Mid range Schecter used to have a reputation for high quality when they were Korean made, I guess the Indonesian factories are still hit and miss...

It has crossed my mind that the £399 Jackson I bought this week is currently kicking the Reaper's arse, which was nearly twice the price. I did actually say to Dene in Peach that if it was a £200 Squier I wouldn't bother, but it's actually the 3rd most expensive guitar I've ever bought.

I guess the upside of this is that the next one I get will be thoroughly checked and working... hopefully

skullfunkerry

Final update on this: Peach phoned me today. Apparently Schecter's distributor told them that dead spots are unavoidable and there's no guarantee that another guitar won't have the same problem, therefore they're not even prepared to take the guitar back to have a look at it.

Peach are refunding me. It's a shame, I really liked the guitar, but that dead spot was a problem, so there was no point in getting it back as I just wouldn't have played it.

I'd still recommend them to @lysander - I'm sure the chances of another one having the same problem are infinitesimal (and @Grumpyrocker is very happy with his C-6 Pro). I'm a little bit down on Schecter right now though tbh; but that's more a reflection of the service they've (not) given, rather than the guitar.

Arktik83

Wow, doesn't reflect well on Schecter's after sales service if they just give such a flat, dismissive response to your problem.  Glad to hear you're getting your money back but would have been nicer if Schecter actually lifted a finger to try and resolve your issue!  

skullfunkerry

Arktik83 said:

Wow, doesn't reflect well on Schecter's after sales service if they just give such a flat, dismissive response to your problem.  Glad to hear you're getting your money back but would have been nicer if Schecter actually lifted a finger to try and resolve your issue!  

Yep. I'm more than happy with how Peach have resolved this, but it's definitely put me off buying another Schecter

lysander

To be fair I can understand their response about the dead spot - it’s indeed a somewhat subjective ( though I know it can be a bummer - a couple of my guitars have some ) issue and also unavoidable, so it’s not clear what they could do to fix it since a swap could give the same issue somewhere else.

LastMantra

The colours and wood grain work really well to my eye. Very nice.

WildWayz

lysander said:

To be fair I can understand their response about the dead spot - it’s indeed a somewhat subjective ( though I know it can be a bummer - a couple of my guitars have some ) issue and also unavoidable, so it’s not clear what they could do to fix it since a swap could give the same issue somewhere else.

No guitar should have dead spots. I can understand frets that need tapping back in to a certain degree. All my guitars have a super-low action and no dead spots... these range from my Yamaha Pacifica 311H to my custom built Gordon Smith Graduate. They don't even dead out on bends and ring out cleanly. Only time they'd have issues is if I pull up on a trem then it would fret out if it's pulled all the way back....

skullfunkerry

WildWayz said:

lysander said:

To be fair I can understand their response about the dead spot - it’s indeed a somewhat subjective ( though I know it can be a bummer - a couple of my guitars have some ) issue and also unavoidable, so it’s not clear what they could do to fix it since a swap could give the same issue somewhere else.

No guitar should have dead spots. I can understand frets that need tapping back in to a certain degree. All my guitars have a super-low action and no dead spots... these range from my Yamaha Pacifica 311H to my custom built Gordon Smith Graduate. They don't even dead out on bends and ring out cleanly. Only time they'd have issues is if I pull up on a trem then it would fret out if it's pulled all the way back....

I've heard of guitars having dead spots before, but I've never experienced it. I'm sure I remember seeing weights that you can clamp to a headstock which are supposed to alter the resonant frequencies of a neck and cure (or at least move) dead spots.

The two issues I had were that the dead spot was right in the middle of a position where I play a lot, and also since none of my other guitars have the same issue the Reaper would have ended up gathering dust.

Grumpyrocker

Ah that's a real shame, that guitar was a real looker.

Meanwhile I'm still ridiculously happy with mine. Haven't touched any of my other guitars since it arrived.

lysander

WildWayz said:

lysander said:

To be fair I can understand their response about the dead spot - it’s indeed a somewhat subjective ( though I know it can be a bummer - a couple of my guitars have some ) issue and also unavoidable, so it’s not clear what they could do to fix it since a swap could give the same issue somewhere else.

No guitar should have dead spots. I can understand frets that need tapping back in to a certain degree. All my guitars have a super-low action and no dead spots... these range from my Yamaha Pacifica 311H to my custom built Gordon Smith Graduate. They don't even dead out on bends and ring out cleanly. Only time they'd have issues is if I pull up on a trem then it would fret out if it's pulled all the way back....

Ok I guess it depends on the dead spot and that’s why I said it can be subjective.

A badly seated fret can give a bad dead spot - this can be checked by gently tapping the frets with a wrench ( strings off of course ) and seeing if any of them sound deader - in this case reseating and wicking the fret with low viscosity superglue will sort it out.
None of my guitars have any of those either as I would have sorted them out otherwise and always use glue if I refret.

But a dead spot can also be a much more subtle quieter spot on the fretboard due to a vibration node - these are unavoidable due to the physics of vibrating instruments and are present in all guitars to some extent, but can be very irritating if you notice one and pay attention to it.

Three-ColourSunburst

lysander said:

But a dead spot can also be a much more subtle quieter spot on the fretboard due to a vibration node - these are unavoidable due to the physics of vibrating instruments and are present in all guitars to some extent, but can be very irritating if you notice one and pay attention to it.

The correct term for 'vibration node' is 'resonance'. Despite guitar folklore the last thing one wants is a 'resonant' guitar!

Such resonances almost always relate to the behaviour of the neck, which as a relatively long, thin piece of wood is more likely to vibrate at a frequency close to that of a played note, whilst the big thick slab of the body will have a much lower natural resonant frequency. In addition the impedance of the string/ bridge / body will also be too high for any significant degree of energy transfer to occur between the string and the body.

Thankfully, in many guitars the natural resonant frequencies of the neck / body do not correspond with any played note, so cause no issues and have no affect on the sound.

It's much the same story in the classical world, where builders of instruments such as cellos and violins will attempt to dampen or shift the frequency of the fundamental body resonances so they don't produce a flat spot or 'wolf' tone, with the player often taking additional steps such as adding a string mute.

Here's another example of a guitar with a serious resonance problem. This Gibson Custom 59 reissue clearly has a neck resonance right around 247 Hz, affecting the 'B3' note at the 4th fret. As a result the fundamental just won't sustain, and as the player keeps on adding energy to the string via vibrato, the first harmonic becomes dominant.

lysander

@Three-ColourSunburst ;;
while I agree with most of your points, why do you say that the impedance of the strings to bridge and bridge to body is too high to allow significant transfer of energy?

That seems contrary to evidence that placing your ear against the body of an electric while playing while let you hear it loud and clear,
and a semi hollow with the same bridge as a solid body is much louder acoustically - which would rather show that it’s the body to air impedance which is high for solidbodies.

Edit: also when people talk about resonant guitars they just mean acoustically loud and are not talking about resonance as in the physics sense - but I’m sure you know that.

Three-ColourSunburst

lysander said:

@Three-ColourSunburst ;;
while I agree with most of your points, why do you say that the impedance of the strings to bridge and bridge to body is too high to allow significant transfer of energy?

That seems contrary to evidence that placing your ear against the body of an electric while playing while let you hear it loud and clear, and a semi hollow with the same bridge as a solid body is much louder acoustically - which would rather show that it’s the body to air impedance which is high for solidbodies.

Because that is what the physical measurements show.

The fact that you can hear the body of an electric guitar vibrating if you place your ear against the body, or the fact that an electronic tuner can sense those vibrations is not a reliable measure of how much energy is actually being transferred!

Sure, some small amount of energy is dissipated by the body, but an electric guitar is designed to minimise such losses and maintain the energy in the string, thereby maximising sustain. Hence the use of a thick, solid body a heavy, rigid metal bridge and so on. This the opposite of an instrument, such as violin, that is designed to have high conductance at the string-to-body interface. To achieve this it is necessary to make the body as light and thin as is possible, with a bridge weighing just a couple of grams.

The long sustain of an electric guitar is itself evidence that little energy is transferred to the body. In comparison a violin effectively has no sustain, hence the need for a bow. (A guitar with a similarly low bridge impedance value would sound just like a violin played pizzicato.)

Even with an acoustic guitar the energy lost to the body is less than that lost to the air as it is displaced by the vibrating string - and in many cases even the internal mechanical losses due to the string's stiffness. With the thinner, unwound strings the energy lost to the body will be a full magnitude less than that lost to the air - and this with an acoustic guitar that is designed to convert the string's energy into sound via the vibration of the thin, light weight soundboard of the instrument. For an electric guitar the transfer of energy to the body will be much lower still.

(For example, see 'Influence of Damping and Nonlinearity in Plucked Strings: Why Do Light-Gauge Strings Sound Brighter?' By  J. Woodhouse Acta Acustica united with Acustica  Vol. 103 (2017) 1064 – 1079. DOI 10.3813/AAA.919135)

For some direct measurements of the amount of energy transferred via the bride to the  body of an electric guitar see 'Investigating dead spots of electric guitars' by H.Fleischer in Acustica  - acta acustica 85 (1999), 128 - 135. Here is an illustration from that paper showing the conductance of an electric guitar and the nut (top) and bridge (bottom) over a range of frequencies.

The lower diagram shows that the conductance at the bridge is low over the entire measured frequency range with a minor increase towards higher frequencies. This means that at the bridge termination the string "sees" a support with no considerable energy loss, despite the fact that this guitar features a vibrato mechanism.

http://imgbox.com/VzrBQOKw#

It is also worth noting that, due to the laws of entropy, this flow of energy, as small as it is, will always be from the higher energy part of the system (the string) to the lower energy part of the system (the body). Any flow of energy in the reverse direction is practically nil, given the low amount of energy carried by the body and the high impedance of the bridge/ body interface.