Schecter Guitar Research Demon-7 7-String Electric Guitar Vintage White

Most Liked Positive Review

A Decent Mid-Range Guitar

I have to begin this by saying that I bought this guitar for specifically four reasons: I've never owned a 7-string and wanted one. I didn't want to pay a lot of money in case I didn't like playing a 7-string. And I trust Schecter because I've bought a few others in the past and have liked them. The most important reason however is that I wanted a 7-string to use for lower rhythm parts in my original tunes. I've been playing electric guitar for 40 years, so I'm no noob to it. I consider myself to be predominantly a lead player, but I put as much emphasis on rhythm as lead, and I put as much into my rhythms as I do my leads. In other words, I'm not just chugging along with basic barre chords, but playing some fairly intricate stuff, as rock/metal goes. I've played in several working club bands through the years, but now have a home studio setup which I use to record my original music. I decided I wanted to get a 7-string, so I bought this one, and it has not disappointed me aside from one thing, which is that the pickup selector switch has a problem. Sometimes it doesn't switch fully into the bridge pickup position, like it's not making proper contact, unless I flip it harder than normal. From experience I know that that means that that switch will cease working soon. I don't know if I'm going to take it to GC and ask them to fix it as a warranty thing though. They'll just replace it with another cheap switch, which will probably fail within a year anyway, so I'll probably just buy a quality switch and replace it myself. That is really my only complaint, but I want to emphasize that IMO, this is not a professional guitar. The hardware is cheap. It looks nice, but realistically speaking, the only way they can sell it at this low price is to use cheap components and give it only the basic attention. But that's okay, because I knew that going in. As I already wrote, I wanted a 7-string strictly for recording rhythm parts. For that, it does really well. There's some fret buzz and the pickups are a bit overbearing and needed to be lowered, but that was taken care of with some basic setup, which I've had to do a lot of over the years, with so many guitars I can't even remember them all. But don't expect to grab it and play Petrucci, Van Halen or Malmsteen leads with it. IMO, it's just not great for more complex lead stuff, especially in the higher resisters. There's a lot I could write about that, but you probably get the idea. bear in mind that as fare as the above goes, I have a couple upscale 6 string guitars that I use for leads, so my standards are much higher than this guitar can ever meet where it comes to playing lead. Your mileage may vary. I'm giving it four stars, but be aware that I consider this to be a good guitar for rhythm and for recording. I wouldn't want to take it out on stage though. The tuning keys aren't great. The pickups are okay, but not as good as the active EMG pickups on my Schecter C-1 Hellraiser FR. The action is okay. The volume and tone knobs are adequate. I would recommend it to a friend, but only to a friend who wanted a guitar for the above reasons. I would not recommend it to a friend, or anyone for that matter, who needs a guitar that will stand up to the abuse of playing live, frequently.