New guitar - CST

Where to begin...

To make a very long story short, about two weeks ago I was offered a CST at what I considered a very reasonable price completely out of the blue. I've only even seen one of these for sale once, so after a quick check at my savings account and about six hours of wrestling with my conscience, I finally admitted I'd never forgive myself if I let this one pass.

The guitar arrived last night via UPS (who apparently had better things to do than track my package, it went straight from "information recieved, package will be picked up" to "package delivered" - I wish the real world worked like that, too ), and man... I've never seen another guitar quite like this one. Ibanez isn't known for their picture-perfect bookmatched tops, and this one's no exception, but I really dig the slight chaos. Top looks maybe 3mm thick, not major, but it seems to have a noticeable effect on the tone (more later). Three peice maple neck, bare ebony fretboard, medium-large ish frets. Fit and finish is absurd - everything you'd expect of a J-Custom. While cooking dinner last night (a LATE dinner, took me rather a while to put it down), I kept taking breaks to go look at the thing - I think I'm in love.

Tonally... Well, I've got a loooong track record on this one - I've always held that mahogany really isn't an ideal tonewood for a sevenstring. If I had a hat, I'd be eating it. Maybe it's the maple top, maybe it's the ebony fretboard, but notes on this thing sound CRISP. Acoustically, it's just as resonant (if not more so) as my UVPWH, which came as a REAL shock as that thing's a beast and I always figured part of it's tone came from the fact so little of the finish was still in one peice. So, we're talking about a guitar that sounds just as full as my UV, but with the extra clarity to the attack that I'd been missing. Especially at lower gain settings on my Nomad, this thing is just brutal.

The pickups are custom-wound dimarzios, reputedly hand-wound by Steve Beuchler himself. I'll try to confirm this once I get a chance to take them out and check for model numbers, etc. I'm not 100% sold on the bridge, but the neck pickup sounds phenominal - very warm, round, and with that wonderful "clang" to the attack when you dig in on lower gain levels. I may end up swapping out the bridge (I'll give it a few weeks, but the JB is certainly tempting), but it IS a good sounding pickup - better natural harmonics than my UV's Blaze, and it's a well balanced tone that handles higher gain setting quite well. I'm wondering if maybe I raise it slightly it'll work out.

The neck strikes me as similar to how I remember my old 2027, which is neither surprising nor at all a bad thing - that guitar's neck owned. A little more "D" shaped than my UV, and maybe a little girthier, but very comfortable (more so than the 7620's I've played), and feels like it'll be stable as hell.

And, since there's some law against posting one of these without pics...




And the latest family shot:


I'll get some bigger shots up there eventually.

-Drew