My Schecter Hellraiser 7 review

Shortly after joining this forum I read Drew's review of his Hellraiser 7 and it
made me search one out so I could try one.
I already had an ESP M-207 and although I like it , I'm not crazy about it
from a "Lead playing" perspective.
I finally found a little shop right outside of Boston (Carlino guitars in Medford,
Ed the owner is super cool to deal with) that had one left , a black one(this
was 2 weeks ago) so on that Saturday I went down to his store with a buddy
of mine (brought the M-207 along to do some comparisons) and a recently
zero-ed out credit card

I've had this for about 2 weeks now and I've been
playing the shit out of it so here are my impressions of this guitar.
Quick Review
5 stars= best
.
Quick Review
5 stars= best
1.Construction
no problems here, the pot for the neck pickup was dead in the store but
the store owner is a builder and he changed it on the spot before I took it
home. Other than that it looks pretty good, the body binding looks nice,
the neck joint is smooth and tight. Mahogany body,mahogany neck with a
rosewood board. The Rosewood board isn't as "raw" feeling as I would like
but besides that I've seen no build problems with this one at all. Fret work
was nicely done, the inlays look great, although they are hard to see so
I've gotten lost a couple of times while playing.
I'll get used to it quick enough.
Score=4 stars -1 for the dead pot, and the "over" finished rosewood.

2.Playability
Well the first thing you notice when you pick one of these up is "Damn
that's a big neck", the second thing you notice is how easy it is to play.
It took me about ten minutes to really get used to the neck on this,
compared to the Neck on my ESP which is a lot closer to a "Wizard" type
of neck. This neck feels like a bigger version of the neck on my SL2H
soloist which is chunkier than most soloist necks I've played. I took to it
immediately (now I see why some people love the Hollsworth Charvel
necks) . The neck is painted but the finish Schecter uses feels smooth
and not sticky so it's OK there.
Playing this thing at times feels like I'm playing a nylon string classical
guitar..............with steel strings and pickups. the higher fret access is
great on this guitar, the added size of the fret board actually makes it
really comfy to play up high on this thing. another thing I noticed is that
the neck flattens as you go up towards the body, this makes playing lead
on this guitar really comfortable. the action was set up really nicely
(the owner of the store sets them up as they come in.) Low with no buzz
at all, I actually want to raise the treble side of the bridge up a little.

Schecter uses 10-56 gauge strings on these 7's and it works really well.
the 56 at this scale is nice and tight. Another thing I noticed is that the
slope of the profile of this neck makes sweeping really comfortable, no
wonder Loomis is such as "arppegiator" on this guitar , the neck shape
lends itself really well to this style of playing.
The frets are huge so legato is a piece of cake on this,I have been playing
some Greg Howe and Satch on this (no problemo), this is the first non
floyded guitar I've owned since I started playing again 2 1/2 years ago so
I've had to adjust my picking hand a bit on the TonePros TOM(which is locked so I need an allen wrench to adjust it) bridge but
again no big deal.
Score-5 (once you get used to the size of the neck you'll either love it or hate it, I love it )

3.Sound
2 EMG 707s make this thing in a Mahogany body with a Mahogany neck
make this thing a monster. Fat,Fat,Fat tone, these pickups love gain, this
guitar sounds absolutely killer thru my 5150 and my B-52. if you decide to
play with moderate gain and roll back the volume on your guitar you can
get some sweet almost "single coil" tones out of it. (Just like Drew said)
My B-52 has a great clean channel on it and last night I put it thru the
paces with a little jazz and mellow playing and the mahogany body really
makes this sound smooth clean. The neck pickup sounds incredibly thick
when playing with gain it actually sounds a little better if you roll back the
guitar volume to about 6-7. Oh and the tone pot on these actually works
you can get a decent variety of tones out of these pickups by fooling
around with all of you guitar pots. This is my first experiance with EMGs
and I must say I'm not dissappointed at all, these are pretty bright p/us so
you may want to roll back the higher treble frequencies a tad when using
this guitar, but on this particular guitar they work well.
Another thing I noticed is that this guitar sounds way brighter thru my 5150
than it does thu my B-52. thru my 5150 it almost sounds like a Fender strat
on steroids, I set the pregain on my lead channel to 3 and rolled the volumes
on the guitar back to around 7 and got a really good bluesy sound out of it.
To say I was surprised is an understatement, thru my B-52 (voiced very
similar to a dual recto) I get a real good "Dead Heart in a Dead World"
Loomis sound. I'm actually getting ready to record "engines of Hate(found
someone that will do the vocals for me), I'm just working on smoothing out
the lead in that song on the Hellraiser.

Score -4
Depending on what rig you run it thru you may get very different sounds
out of it. Thru my B-52 I absolutely love it, thru my 5150 I need to change
up the EQ settings to get it to sound the way I'd would want it to.
I can see why Loomis got such a great sound with this guitar going thru
dual rectos.

Overall- I give this guitar score of 4 out of 5.
It's fun to play, they look
mean as fuck in person, if Schecter ever decides to release the "Loomis"
model of this with a floyd and they keep the price point where it is now , I
would buy it in a heart beat. For the money it's tough to beat.........and I
never thought I'd say that about a Korean import, but it seems like
Schecter has got their shit together
I bought my ESP M-207 with me when I tried out this guitar in the store
and 2 things jumped out at me. 1 this things sounds huge next to the ESP
and the ESP has a Duncan JB in the bridge(basswood body) and second
the upper fret access on the Schecter is way better, than the ESP, even
though the cutaway on the lower horn is deeper on the ESP.
Actually if the ESP played better up high I never would've even looked
at one of these, but Set neck vs bolt on and set neck wins in this case.
oh and my credit card isn't zero-ed out anymore.

I hope this helps anyone curious about these.
My daughter the shortest headbanger in our house