I posted more or less an "incoming" thread last week, but honestly, this NGD post is more than deserved, because the guitar is that good. And when I say, "good," I really mean, "great." It's superb in every way.
After letting it acclimate for about an hour and a half, I couldn't hold my horses any longer. The guitar was still a little cold, but...whatever. First, the pic doesn't do it justice. There's a depth and glow to the grain and the color that can't be appreciated in a picture. It's also very, very light weight!
There are specs for these Wood Library models on the Northeast Music site, so I won't belabor things. Suffice it to say that Paul Smith helped Jack Gretz select the wood for this run, and they spent a lot of time tapping planks.
OK, the looks part is out of the way, and the weight part is out of the way. Let's talk tone. First of all, I just got the cast off my arm that had an ulnar nerve operation last week to fix my fretting hand, and things are very sore and stiff still, right down to the fingers. So I couldn't play it for more than about 40 minutes before I felt I'd better not push things any longer.
I'll also say up front that my tone preference is mahogany neck guitars. This is one of those "the tone I hear in my head" kind of things. It can't be explained. You, I, and the American people know that personal preference is very hard to figure out. It just is. Accept it, and move on. Compared to the maple neck, I'd say this one sounds more caramel. I know. It's not food. But I can't describe it any other way that seems to do the job at the moment.
So I played and played, and switched between amps, and you know what, when you're getting that "this is my thing" kind of tone, it's hard to remember to be a good tester and do the things that testers do. Before I stopped, the hand was cramping a little, and the arm was hurting, and discretion being the better part of valor, I had to stop.
As a result, I forgot to try the coil splits! Doh!
Well, I don't often use coil splits, and that's my second excuse. But I did try it with three amps - the DG30, the HXDA, and the Lone Star 100 Watt. So at least there's that. And I do use the volume and tone controls a lot when I play. And I tried it with pedals.
My first reaction to the tone and feel was, "How can this not be a Private Stock?" It sustains forever, it feels perfect (great setup, Jack, thank you, even with the bad hand I could play the stock .010s!), and everything about it seems right to me. It was easy to conjure up a bunch of great tones with all 3 amps, just working the tone and volume knobs, and it's one of few guitars that I think sounds very much at home on all three of them. In addition, it sounded wonderful with my pedals.
Maybe with a maple neck the McCarty is a little more like it was made for the Mesa - on the clean channel only -- hard to say, and I'm splitting hairs a little. Probably that has to do with the Lone Star being more in the Fender Blackface camp. The DG30 amp seems to favor this new one a titch. I mean, a small amount. The HXDA loved this guitar on both pickups, it doesn't much care what you plug into it, it's just gonna always sound awesome, but as you know, my preference for 'hog made it that much more special for me.
As I've discovered before, the 58/15s have a really nice clarity and crispness to them, without losing their warmth. The neck pickup is "that" classic neck 'bucker tone, and the bridge is clear, open and bright, with plenty of cut, but it does this without your ears bleeding from too much high end.
With this bridge, there is no "plink." There are solid fundamentals, very defined overtones, and the bottom has a very firm feel with lots of articulation.
Construction: The guitar has an African ribbon mahogany back, East Coast maple top, dead quarter sawn 'hog neck, and BRW fretboard. The pickups are the 58/15s, standard issue, the bridge is the Paul's Guitar bridge with the brass inserts. Everything is flawless.
I've found over the years that the African mahogany sounds very resonant and most pieces made from it feel light.
My tone description of this guitar would be that it sounds partly like the PS 594 demo that I loved, and partly like the McCarty demos that we've all already heard many times. Or that I've heard many times, since, you know, I do that listening to PRS demos thing, and you may not.
Anyway, whether it's the grade of mahogany for the back, the fretboard BRW, or something else, it does lean somewhere in the middle of 594 and standard McCarty. That ain't bad, my friend!
This one has an absolute boatload of gorgeous sustain; and it's warm and beautiful sounding without losing any clarity. Did I, um, mention the boatload of sustain? Not being a high gain player, I have nothing to say about playing through high gain amps. I did run it for a bit with a boost pedal into the HXDA and it sounded great, but high gain players would have asked for more gain, so there's that. It'd probably be good to know that my tone inclinations are more along the lines of Albert King, BB King, Allmans, Bonamassa, Grissom, SRV, etc., and I don't spend much time listening to guys who do high gain stuff. In other news, I respect the heck out of players like Vai and Satch, but their tone isn't my deal. So there's your caveat on this review; guys who play with more gain than Vai should utterly ignore me, and metal players should kick this review to the curb. Where, let's face it, any review by me really belongs.
Finally, the case: black paisley. Cool.
So there you have it. This guitar will no doubt become a real workhorse for me, it does its thing extremely well.
After letting it acclimate for about an hour and a half, I couldn't hold my horses any longer. The guitar was still a little cold, but...whatever. First, the pic doesn't do it justice. There's a depth and glow to the grain and the color that can't be appreciated in a picture. It's also very, very light weight!
There are specs for these Wood Library models on the Northeast Music site, so I won't belabor things. Suffice it to say that Paul Smith helped Jack Gretz select the wood for this run, and they spent a lot of time tapping planks.
OK, the looks part is out of the way, and the weight part is out of the way. Let's talk tone. First of all, I just got the cast off my arm that had an ulnar nerve operation last week to fix my fretting hand, and things are very sore and stiff still, right down to the fingers. So I couldn't play it for more than about 40 minutes before I felt I'd better not push things any longer.
I'll also say up front that my tone preference is mahogany neck guitars. This is one of those "the tone I hear in my head" kind of things. It can't be explained. You, I, and the American people know that personal preference is very hard to figure out. It just is. Accept it, and move on. Compared to the maple neck, I'd say this one sounds more caramel. I know. It's not food. But I can't describe it any other way that seems to do the job at the moment.
So I played and played, and switched between amps, and you know what, when you're getting that "this is my thing" kind of tone, it's hard to remember to be a good tester and do the things that testers do. Before I stopped, the hand was cramping a little, and the arm was hurting, and discretion being the better part of valor, I had to stop.
As a result, I forgot to try the coil splits! Doh!
Well, I don't often use coil splits, and that's my second excuse. But I did try it with three amps - the DG30, the HXDA, and the Lone Star 100 Watt. So at least there's that. And I do use the volume and tone controls a lot when I play. And I tried it with pedals.
My first reaction to the tone and feel was, "How can this not be a Private Stock?" It sustains forever, it feels perfect (great setup, Jack, thank you, even with the bad hand I could play the stock .010s!), and everything about it seems right to me. It was easy to conjure up a bunch of great tones with all 3 amps, just working the tone and volume knobs, and it's one of few guitars that I think sounds very much at home on all three of them. In addition, it sounded wonderful with my pedals.
Maybe with a maple neck the McCarty is a little more like it was made for the Mesa - on the clean channel only -- hard to say, and I'm splitting hairs a little. Probably that has to do with the Lone Star being more in the Fender Blackface camp. The DG30 amp seems to favor this new one a titch. I mean, a small amount. The HXDA loved this guitar on both pickups, it doesn't much care what you plug into it, it's just gonna always sound awesome, but as you know, my preference for 'hog made it that much more special for me.
As I've discovered before, the 58/15s have a really nice clarity and crispness to them, without losing their warmth. The neck pickup is "that" classic neck 'bucker tone, and the bridge is clear, open and bright, with plenty of cut, but it does this without your ears bleeding from too much high end.
With this bridge, there is no "plink." There are solid fundamentals, very defined overtones, and the bottom has a very firm feel with lots of articulation.
Construction: The guitar has an African ribbon mahogany back, East Coast maple top, dead quarter sawn 'hog neck, and BRW fretboard. The pickups are the 58/15s, standard issue, the bridge is the Paul's Guitar bridge with the brass inserts. Everything is flawless.
I've found over the years that the African mahogany sounds very resonant and most pieces made from it feel light.
My tone description of this guitar would be that it sounds partly like the PS 594 demo that I loved, and partly like the McCarty demos that we've all already heard many times. Or that I've heard many times, since, you know, I do that listening to PRS demos thing, and you may not.
Anyway, whether it's the grade of mahogany for the back, the fretboard BRW, or something else, it does lean somewhere in the middle of 594 and standard McCarty. That ain't bad, my friend!
This one has an absolute boatload of gorgeous sustain; and it's warm and beautiful sounding without losing any clarity. Did I, um, mention the boatload of sustain? Not being a high gain player, I have nothing to say about playing through high gain amps. I did run it for a bit with a boost pedal into the HXDA and it sounded great, but high gain players would have asked for more gain, so there's that. It'd probably be good to know that my tone inclinations are more along the lines of Albert King, BB King, Allmans, Bonamassa, Grissom, SRV, etc., and I don't spend much time listening to guys who do high gain stuff. In other news, I respect the heck out of players like Vai and Satch, but their tone isn't my deal. So there's your caveat on this review; guys who play with more gain than Vai should utterly ignore me, and metal players should kick this review to the curb. Where, let's face it, any review by me really belongs.
Finally, the case: black paisley. Cool.
So there you have it. This guitar will no doubt become a real workhorse for me, it does its thing extremely well.
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