Tricked out Zach Myers SE!

[ViperDoc]

Anybody else notice the Korean made versions seemed far superior? The tuners seemed better as they didn’t feel light and held tune fine. The maple caps were thicker. I measured a few mm thicker on the cap. The cosmetics on the older ones seem better with better matching of the mahogany pieces to hide the seams and 5 parts of the head stock. Small details like cavity covers were flushed to the guitar.

The Indonesian seem “cheaper”…but still play great, which I guess is all that matters. I would say the major improvement now is the core nut and headstock overlay. The color is all preference.

The Korean SEs likely hold the heavyweight bang-for-your-buck title of all time.

 

[Broseph]

The essentially perfect fit and finish on my Korean '11 SE245 is slightly superior to my '22 S2 McCarty 594 SC which has a slight step-off between the neck mahogany and the binding. And the S2 has non-flush cavity covers too. The S2 hardware is way better overall. Tempting to replace the nut with an S2 version but it's a little thinner and the string spacing is a bit wider.

Ha. I was thinking of putting a bone Pattern vintage nut on my old zach myers. The width appears correct but the string spacing is wider on the 594. I guess I’ll have to pay a luthier to do the job. Not a fan of plastic nuts and I think the bone would look better than a core nut

 

[Broseph]

List of all the pickups I tried in the ZM:
Stock 245s
58/15s
Fralin Pure PAF
Fralin Humbucker sized noiseless p90s
BareKnuckles Stormy Monday
BareKnuckles Mule set
Bareknuckles Mule neck, Riff Raff bridge set
BareKnuckles Abraxas set (unconvered and covered)
Dimarazio 36th anniversary
Seymour Duncan APH-2s (nickel covered)

Many of these were great pickups. Heck the base stock pickups would be ok but I feel the guitar would need rewiring done to minimize the treble loss when the volume is decreased. Either place a treble bleed or rewire it like the tremonti core would be my suggestion.

But By far my fav pickups has been the Seymour Slash set of APH2. It’s a delight, especially the neck pickup. My fav Zach myers has that set.

My 2nd Zach myers has a set of covered Abraxas. Another delight and better than Mules or Riff Raffs in this model. Certainly hotter, more mid focused than slash’s set. Abraxas simply sound right in a single cut. And clearly slash’s set was designed for a single cut.

 

[Broseph]

Yeah it’s my fav mod platform. I’ve probably been thru 6 different ZMs. These are my current 3, all in different tunings. Absolutely love these things. The book matching on the quilt is better than what the photo shows. I’m still in the process of upgrading the quilt. Hopefully one day I’ll come across one of the Brian’s cherry quilt fade that meets my standard!

 

[Assumer]

Beautiful guitar. Enjoy.

 

[csquared]

Looks awesome
I'm blessed/cursed as Brian's is 10 minutes away....
They have some unbelievable stuff...

 

[Broseph]

Updated. Swapped out the cherry burst for charcoal cherry fade!