# Neal Schon is apparently trying to bring back Schon Guitars



## HeHasTheJazzHands (Aug 23, 2020)

Anyone know of these guitars?















For those unaware; Neal Schon of Journey had his own brand of guitars in the mid-late '80s named Schon guitars. They were made by both Jackson for a period, then production was moved to Larrivee for the rest of the production. 

But yeah, he's been showing off old Schon guitars on his Facebook page, and has been tagging Gibson, Kramer, and Epiphone in his posts, and has been talking about trying to get a deal to get these made again. So it sounds like he's trying to work with Gibson to bring these guitars back.


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## BenjaminW (Aug 23, 2020)

I like Neal Schon, but god damn those guitars are ugly.


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## MaxOfMetal (Aug 23, 2020)

BenjaminW said:


> I like Neal Schon, but god damn those guitars are ugly.



Yeah, not exactly hyped.


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## littlebadboy (Aug 23, 2020)

BenjaminW said:


> I like Neal Schon, but god damn those guitars are ugly.


Agree. It's like Mike Tyson bit off a part of it.


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## Edika (Aug 23, 2020)

I don't know they're kinda ugly. I kind of like the purple one and I think they would look better without a pick guard. But I wouldn't jump front in line to get one for sure.


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## BenjaminW (Aug 23, 2020)

littlebadboy said:


> Agree. It's like Mike Tyson bit off a part of it.


I guess Neal should've named his guitars Evander Holyfield.


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## Seabeast2000 (Aug 23, 2020)

I only know of these from the Ed Roman site years ago. I had thought that these were originally Gibson produced. Maybe he had another Gibson that he used back in the early 80s, not sure.


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## Hollowway (Aug 23, 2020)

BenjaminW said:


> I like Neal Schon, but god damn those guitars are ugly.


 I think this sentiment will be shared by 99.9% of the public.


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## BenjaminW (Aug 23, 2020)

Hollowway said:


> I think this sentiment will be shared by 99.9% of the public.


They kinda look like weird kidney beans with a pointy headstock.


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## TheBolivianSniper (Aug 23, 2020)

I really like that white one unironically


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## Hollowway (Aug 23, 2020)

TheBolivianSniper said:


> I really like that white one unironically


 You're the 0.1%.


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## Zhysick (Aug 23, 2020)

I like the white and the purple one... I think that shape only works if the pickguard and the body are the same color or similar. The red one, with the perloid pickguard and the red body just looks completely off, like a Strat with a tele bridge and a jazzmaster neck pickup... it just don't belong there.

But the shape is weird... but I like weird... I am weird.

Happy to be part of the 0.1% hahaha


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## jephjacques (Aug 23, 2020)

I think they actually look kinda neat. But I wouldn't buy one.


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## Mathemagician (Aug 23, 2020)

Those would have looked right at home in the mid ‘00’s in a white stripes music video.


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## Spicypickles (Aug 23, 2020)

I might scoop up that purple one if I saw it in a pawn shop and it played awesome. Not too bad


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## Hollowway (Aug 23, 2020)

Mathemagician said:


> Those would have looked right at home in the mid ‘00’s in a white stripes music video.


Holy crap, you're 100% right!


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## Amenthea (Aug 23, 2020)

Weirdly enough, there are people who not only like Jackson Warriors, but buy them too. By that token liking these isn't that far off.


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## TheBolivianSniper (Aug 23, 2020)

Amenthea said:


> Weirdly enough, there are people who not only like Jackson Warriors, but buy them too. By that token liking these isn't that far off.



I also very much like warriors. 

I feel like this thread is not a place I should be.


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## Shawn (Aug 23, 2020)

BenjaminW said:


> I like Neal Schon, but god damn those guitars are ugly.


Exactly what I was thinking.


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## jephjacques (Aug 23, 2020)

Amenthea said:


> Weirdly enough, there are people who not only like Jackson Warriors, but buy them too. By that token liking these isn't that far off.



I thought Warriors were dumb as hell until I actually played one and realized how comfortable and well balanced they are! So in the end they're dumb as hell but ALSO comfortable and well balanced


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## HeHasTheJazzHands (Aug 23, 2020)

jephjacques said:


> I thought Warriors were dumb as hell until I actually played one and realized how comfortable and well balanced they are! So in the end they're dumb as hell but ALSO comfortable and well balanced



Yep, mine felt fucking great. Sounded like ass though.


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## mikernaut (Aug 24, 2020)

Fugly and no one is gonna buy a guitar named Schon, it's possibly more whack then the name Kiesel.


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## I play music (Aug 24, 2020)

mikernaut said:


> Fugly and no one is gonna buy a guitar named Schon, it's possibly more whack then the name Kiesel.


It's all German words, Kiesel is pebble, schon is yet.


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## Mprinsje (Aug 24, 2020)

I kinda dig the shape, but not quite enough to consider it.


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## Supernaut (Aug 24, 2020)

Looks great if you like neck dive. Haven't seen Neal Schon in person, but probably made for Gorilla human hybrids.


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## jco5055 (Aug 24, 2020)

Supernaut said:


> Looks great if you like neck dive. Haven't seen Neal Schon in person, but probably made for Gorilla human hybrids.



He is like 5'4 or something


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## Zado (Aug 24, 2020)

mikernaut said:


> Fugly and no one is gonna buy a guitar named Schon, it's possibly more whack then the name Kiesel.


Then Neal Schon just needs to add some drama to their lineup


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## JSanta (Aug 24, 2020)

All I've seen from him the past couple of years are poorly shot IG snippets about all of the PRS Private Stocks he's bought and old Gibsons. And he's playing some of the most quintessentially contrived licks possible. He hasn't done anything remotely interesting or relevant since Steve Perry left Journey.


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## NotDonVito (Aug 24, 2020)

Reminds me of the Yamaha SBV bass.


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## DeathbyDesign (Aug 24, 2020)

Shhhh. If we don't speak its name or model number, then maybe it will go back into the abyss without making it to a production phase.


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## Seabeast2000 (Aug 24, 2020)

Wait a minute. You don't want a "NGD: Schon Abalone Deluxe FR " thread in 2022?


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## BenjaminW (Aug 24, 2020)

JSanta said:


> All I've seen from him the past couple of years are poorly shot IG snippets about all of the PRS Private Stocks he's bought and old Gibsons. And he's playing some of the most quintessentially contrived licks possible. He hasn't done anything remotely interesting or relevant since Steve Perry left Journey.


There's a few standout tracks on the post-Perry Journey albums in my opinion. But that's about it. 

I follow him on Instagram and whenever he posts videos of him playing, the licks all sound the same as well as his backing tracks.


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## CapinCripes (Aug 24, 2020)

I feel like the only standout thing about the originals is that they were made by Jackson during their best times. Being made by Gibson in their.... not so great times makes it a no from me.


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## KnightBrolaire (Aug 25, 2020)

sometimes it's better to let shitty designs stay dead


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## ElysianGuitars (Aug 25, 2020)

Does Neil Schon want to throw a bunch of money at a builder to make this happen? Cause I might know a guy


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## Zado (Aug 25, 2020)

KnightBrolaire said:


> sometimes it's better to let shitty designs stay dead


Tell those who resurrected headless guitars.


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## SDMFVan (Aug 25, 2020)

JSanta said:


> All I've seen from him the past couple of years are poorly shot IG snippets about all of the PRS Private Stocks he's bought and old Gibsons. And he's playing some of the most quintessentially contrived licks possible. He hasn't done anything remotely interesting or relevant since Steve Perry left Journey.



It's wild to me that he manages to make everything from a 59 Les Paul to a 2020 PRS Private Stock sound exactly the same, and that sound is super mediocre.


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## KnightBrolaire (Aug 25, 2020)

Zado said:


> Tell those who resurrected headless guitars.


except headless designs serve an actual purpose (more compact design and usually lighter weight). This godawful bloated chimera of a gibson RD and a les paul with a jackson headstock only serves to stroke Schon's egoschwanz and maybe pad his wallet. I'm guessing the casino tours for AARP chain smoking boomers aren't quite as lucrative as they used to be.


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## efiltsohg (Aug 25, 2020)

now I want one just because of how upset people are over them

the white one would look nice with all black hardware


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## Seabeast2000 (Aug 25, 2020)

I showed my wife these and the purple might sell but the white is weird. This as unbiased and outsider opinion as I can imagine lol.


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## tedtan (Aug 25, 2020)

Fugly guitar is fugly.

That is all.


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## Dead Jackson (May 30, 2021)

HeHasTheJazzHands said:


> Anyone know of these guitars?
> 
> I worked for Neil at Gush Studio (The name they gave Journey’s rehearsal space in Oakland back in the 80s during the hiatus.) Neil had Leo Knapp make 7 prototypes of this and another body style, some with the neck through and others with bolt on necks. These pictures are of the NS-1 Standard, which were bolt on necks and all made by Grover Jackson before the lawsuit when it was discovered Jackson was making them in Taiwan. Very few hit the store shelves. The list price in 1986 was to be $1000 when you could buy a Les Paul standard for $500. These had humbuckers and a 5 position switch that split coils, etc. The pickups were of Neil’s design. Some had a bridge humbucker and 2 single coils. There were the neck through models, but Jackson made very few that I’m aware of, I had one that was a flat profile, gloss black paint, neck through, Floyd Rose, and double humbuckers. I wish I still had that guitar!
> 
> ...


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## Dead Jackson (May 30, 2021)

I have to add: all of Neil’s guitars were “designed by a guitar PLAYER, not a furniture company”. So said Hawkeye, his longtime guitar tech back in the 80s. I can tell you that every single one I played, from his prototypes that he played onstage, to even the lawsuit guitars played brilliantly. Some of that is who sets them up of course, and I suspect Rich Bandoni gets credit for that, but almost all had Floyd Rose tremolos on them. The ones posted here were the first rendition from Neil’s very first prototype with the “speed bars” for tail pieces. Kind of an odd look, and only practical if you’ve ever broken a string onstage with a Floyd: you pick up your backup guitar because restringing a Floyd takes many minutes to tune. Which is why Neil had 2, Larry Lalonde had 2 strats with Floyds, (which we strung EVERY NIGHT, thanks to Fat Dog at Subway Guitars in Berkeley, selling us strings by the gross. That’s a tube of each gauge with 144 strings in it! The touring band’s hero, Fat Dog! Average $.05 a string!). So yeah, to each his own, but I LOVED every single one of these guitars I touched. I know the Journey crew each got one of the Jackson NS-1 standards cyz I was there in “guitar day” when Neil handed them out and I got the Reverse Custom in this picture!


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## Dead Jackson (May 30, 2021)




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## Dead Jackson (May 30, 2021)

(For those who are interested, that backline eventually looked like the following. A Ramones cover band.)


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## Dead Jackson (May 30, 2021)




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## Dead Jackson (May 30, 2021)

And... if I might say so... everybody is entitled to their opinion, but WOW!!! What a bunch of critics! I bet every one of you has designed guitars that have sold millions!!! Filthy rich, every one of you from your inovative genius! Playing that one run-of-the-Mill Gibson SG? Or a Mexican Strat? (Dont knock them, I have one. Not bad, actually!) And I have a $400 Charvel! And 2 $2000 Mosrites! And this very nice Schon Reverse Custom. It f’ing shreds. And, it’s one of 2 in the Western Hemisphere, so rock on with your very boring furniture company made Paul’s and strats and cheers to those who have Ibanez Icemans, Gibson RDs, Flying Vees, Ovation electrics, Richenbacher 12 strings, Ampeg Plexiglass and Dan Armstrong’s, and Sears! And Fender Mustangs! And (insert weird guitars here)! Be different for Christ sake! Quit voting across party lines cuz your friends won’t think yer cool otherwise! Be WEIRD!!!


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## StevenC (May 30, 2021)

Well that escalated quickly.


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## Viginez (May 30, 2021)

i especially like that 90s windows handwritten font for the logo, very inovative and artistic...


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## narad (May 30, 2021)

Dead Jackson said:


> Playing that one run-of-the-Mill Gibson SG? Or a Mexican Strat?
> ...
> so rock on with your very boring furniture company made Paul’s and strats and cheers to those who have Ibanez Icemans, Gibson RDs, Flying Vees, Ovation electrics, Richenbacher 12 strings, Ampeg Plexiglass and Dan Armstrong’s, and Sears! And Fender Mustangs! And (insert weird guitars here)!



Dude... you gotta check out some of the NGD (new guitar day) threads here. Those are downright mundane from the perspective of "the usual" on this forum. This isn't TheGearPage and here Neil probably has a more established reputation as some old guy sending dick pics than as a guitarist.


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## MaxOfMetal (May 30, 2021)

narad said:


> Dude... you gotta check out some of the NGD (new guitar day) threads here. Those are downright mundane from the perspective of "the usual" on this forum. This isn't TheGearPage and here Neil probably has a more established reputation as some old guy sending dick pics than as a guitarist.



Man, this is just the summer of dicks.


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## narad (May 30, 2021)

MaxOfMetal said:


> Man, this is just the summer of dicks.



"Sorry Neil, we're already at quota for dicks on these boards"


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## MaxOfMetal (May 30, 2021)

narad said:


> "Sorry Neil, we're already at quota for dicks on these boards"



It's okay Jayson.


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## Demiurge (May 30, 2021)

Dead Jackson said:


> Be WEIRD!!!



Hey now- I'm weird. Am I "create an account to necrobump an old thread & castigate folks for not liking a guitar that a reasonable person should accept as not for everyone"-level weird? No. But I'm willing to learn.


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## BenjaminW (May 30, 2021)

Oh wait so now I see where the boomer/SSO Pokémon battle meme came from (talking about meme thread incase anyone is lost).


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## VGK17 (May 30, 2021)

Dead Jackson said:


> And... if I might say so... everybody is entitled to their opinion, but WOW!!! What a bunch of critics! I bet every one of you has designed guitars that have sold millions!!! Filthy rich, every one of you from your inovative genius! Playing that one run-of-the-Mill Gibson SG? Or a Mexican Strat? (Dont knock them, I have one. Not bad, actually!) And I have a $400 Charvel! And 2 $2000 Mosrites! And this very nice Schon Reverse Custom. It f’ing shreds. And, it’s one of 2 in the Western Hemisphere, so rock on with your very boring furniture company made Paul’s and strats and cheers to those who have Ibanez Icemans, Gibson RDs, Flying Vees, Ovation electrics, Richenbacher 12 strings, Ampeg Plexiglass and Dan Armstrong’s, and Sears! And Fender Mustangs! And (insert weird guitars here)! Be different for Christ sake! Quit voting across party lines cuz your friends won’t think yer cool otherwise! Be WEIRD!!!


Excellent trolling, 9/10 minus one point for trying a little too hard on your first day.


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## Dead Jackson (May 30, 2021)

I see I’m right at home here. Well stated all, you got me! Although I’m not usually considered a troll on all the other forums I’m a member of... definitely y’all got me pegged as per my age, and therefore relationship to the modern world of our society, (yes I still tell jokes that might get you thrown in prison as grossly inappropriate, cuz I think all self proclaimed “woke” people are f’ing insane uninspired bandwagoning inexperienced uneducated kids who don’t know SHIT! They just think they do...) and I never even heard of this forum until yesterday when I googled SCHON guitars to see if anything came up, mostly to see what they might be selling for, and I found ya’ll, and my first reaction was y’all ain’t never seen the reverse customs, (rare to say the least) and y’all are very opinionated about what you think is beauty. Of course, since I have not yet explored the rest of this forum, I actually have no idea whom I’m writing to! My thoughts in the moment were to set the record straight about the guitar company that Neil tried unsuccessfully to start back before PRS was a household name, back when Ibanez was a cheap POS, back when Yamaha was also a cheap option for those who couldn’t afford a Gibson or Fender, and back when BC Rich and Hamer, and then Charvel (made famous by EVH) were the limit of “boutique” guitars. Of course now, one trip through the guitar section of the NAMM show will baffle the mind with the sheer number of companies trying to gain a foothold in the market which must be huge? The options are astounding, really and now you can order stuff online, so you don’t have to buy what Cigar Center carries. Incidentally, that used to be that they had to buy thousands to get a contract at a decent price, putting boutique makers at odds because those were all hand made. There’s a shop across the aisle from my warehouse that was trying to get in there, they are a prototype shop, making guitars by “hand” with a CNC router to make bodies and necks. They didn’t make it, even though they actually got picked up at NAMM by Cigar Center. It’s a brutal market, rife with players, including the communists, which have an unfair advantage of slave labor and no labor laws, and no EPA, and careless disregard for intellectual property rights and fair practices, rather, they operate on a more primitive reality, “whatever you can get away with is fair game”. That said, the ugly statements riled me up obviously about a part of my history which is dear to me and I disagree with that sentiment, as I like these fugly NS-1s and am obviously the only person on this forum to have played any of them and have actually played and toured with ALL of them. And was there when it all happened and know the real story as it was told to me by Neil, Hawkeye, and Rich Bandoni, and on another note, as per Neil’s music, say what you want about his licks, I’ve heard the real talent in the rehearsal space when he was just working out. Y’all have not heard the real Neil Schon. He is one of the most brilliant guitar players and arguably, song writers in rock and roll history, and I know, you can argue that all day long with other guitar players. How many guitar players does it take to change a lightbulb? Only 1 but he’s got 10 of his friends on the guest list all standing around saying “I can do that better and faster!”...

Apparently, ESP doesn’t agree with y’all, this was their display of their expensive boutique guitars at NAMM 2 years ago. Note the shape of the guitars in the center:


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## Dead Jackson (May 30, 2021)




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## KnightBrolaire (May 30, 2021)

esp stream has farrr more in common with a Gibson RD than the schon shit. Literally nobody is copying that godawful design.


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## Dead Jackson (May 30, 2021)




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