Schecter C7 Blackjack

Schecter C7 Blackjack

First off let’s get the specs out of the way.

· Mahogany body
· Maple neck with a rosewood fret board
· 24 frets
· 26.5” scale length.
· Seymour Duncan pickups JB in the bridge and a ’59 in the neck.
· Master volume and tone knobs (500 K)
· Tone Pros bridge
· Grover tuners
· Five way switch
o Pos. 1 Neck humbucker alone in series.
o Pos. 2 the coil closest to the neck of both pickups wired in parallel.
o Pos. 3 the same coils as Pos. 2 but wired in series.
o Pos 4 the coil closest to the bridge wired in parallel.
o Pos. 5 the JB Model alone in series.

I bought the Blackjack a while back at Peeler Music in Toledo. It violated two of what I thought were my cardinal rules for guitars, it lacked a tremolo and had a painted neck. After messing around on it for a while at Peeler I realized it was a great guitar and worth every penny of the $600 bucks I dropped on it.

The C7 Blackjack is very nicely built. The tuners work well. The bridge is very nice. The guitar feels solid and well built especially at this price. I did notice some of the binding on the body was less than perfect, but you have to really look to see it. I would be pissed if I spent $3000 on this guitar, but since I spent $600 I’m not so upset about it.

After owing for a while and subsequently buying a Schecter Jeff Loomis model I really started pick up on the guitar’s voice and where it really excels.

The C7 Blackjack is a great seven for rock and some old school metal. It has a great fat tone and tons of sustain. If your tastes veer more towards Led Zeppelin and Rush more so than Lamb of God you should be very happy with this guitar. This isn’t to say that the Blackjack is incapable of delivering modern metal tones. It’s just that there are better options for that than the Blackjack. Though if you swapped out the pickups in the Blackjack it would probably be able to deliver those as well.

The JB delivers great sustain and killer harmonics. It has a fair amount of high end cut which depending on your tastes you might love or hate. It doesn’t bother me that much. The low end isn’t the type of super tight chest thumping low-end lots of seven string players prefer. But it’s not that bad in the right context. The neck ’59 is slightly hot and rude sounding. It’s a good all round rock neck humbucker. Pos 2 and 4 deliver good clean Fender-like clean sounds. If I have a complaint with these two positions is that they sound awfully similar. Pos 4 sounds a wee bit brighter than Pos 2 but you really have to focus like the ninja to hear it. Pos 3 is heavenly. It delivers great distorted rhythm tones and sweet dark cleans. It’s my favorite position on the selector switch.

There’s a lot made of Schecter necks, for both their thickness and scale length. My take is that it’s much ado about nothing. If you’ve played a lot of necks the Schecter necks are not that thick. If you ever get to play so older Les Pauls now those have thick necks. The problem with Schecter necks is that so many seven string players are used to Ibanez necks, which are very thin. So it’s all relative. Personally I don’t find it that thick at all. I have fairly big hands though so that seems to help a bit. The 26.5” scale length isn’t that much a hindrance. I find it only really noticeable when you are playing on the first 5 or so frets and need to do some wide stretches but you can practice your way past that. I can play a five string A5 chord that has fretted notes on the 2nd and 5th frets without any extra effort. One big benefit of the 26.5” scale length is the extra fret board real estate up high. If you that thick fingers it’s beneficial.

As for things I don’t like it more falls into the category of opinions than things that are not well made or just flay out bad. I might swat the tuners out for locking units just because it makes changing strings a lot easier. I may swap out the pickups for something a bit different. I like the JB and ’59 but I’m not sure I’m in love with them. I might modify the five-way switch and replace one of the parallel coil options with something like both humbuckers on or something else. These aren’t criticisms of the guitar as much as nitpicks.

Overall the C7 Blackjack is a great guitar for the money and great guitar for players who want a low B but aren’t big into super high gain or devoted metal heads, not that there’s anything wrong with that. The C7 Blackjack is a great guitar and a terrific bargain. I highly recommend it.