Bare Knuckle Pickups Forum
Forum Ringside => Guitars, Amps and Effects => Topic started by: matteo on December 03, 2006, 09:34:48 PM
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i played one today!! Awesome! just wondered if anyone has any experience with them. they seem reasonably priced aswell.
could do with some bks though!! :twisted:
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I think they're a great alternative to ibanez, the quality is reasonbly good and they've got some wicked looking designs and neon yellow colours.
they're uk designed, but not built in this country.. i remember the first series of them taking off and they were fantastic, i've not really been into the newer ones they've been churning out but it's good for mass produced stuff.
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Yeah, good stuff.
Always at least a very passable instrument, if not outright fantastic for the price.
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yeah, i seem to remember the one I tried was pretty good too- the trem is the only downer that I could see- I'm not sure if it's as good as an OFR (or equivalent). EDIT: assuming you're looking at a trem model.
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Here's my two cents, for what it's worth.
They can be good guitars, but if you're buy, make sure you play it first.
I tried several of different Mavericks about three years back, and two of them had apalling quality control issues, including fretwork which left the edge of the fingerboard feeling like it had nails poking out if it.
It's possible I was just unlucky, and they may be way better now. Just thought I'd share.
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i couldnt try the trem out as they said the bars are locked in the safe :roll:
it looked cool though 8)
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^ that sometimes happens. if you are thinking about buying though, you let them know that you are seriously considering a purchase, but it's dependent on getting to try the trem or not.
problem is, even trying it in the shop won't really let you know how good it is, as if the knife edges are soft-ish, this won't become apparent for several months.
You can still normally tell if it's just not as responsive or doesn't feel as high quality as one of the good trems, but you do kind of need to try one of the good trems (original floyd rose or ibanez edge pro (not edge III or edge pro II) head to head.
I'd be wary. I work on the basis that trems are guilty till proven innocent.
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Couldn't agree more about trems, having been stung by some cr@ppy Floyd knockoffs in the past!
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^ ditto.
and just to point out, proven innocent doesn't mean a 5-minute try-out in a shop, it means lots of people who've had them for years, used them for vai-type stunts, and they're still going strong.
:drink:
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Or not going strong, as in the case of my old Ibanez RG470 trem which was on its way out after about a year.
And I'm not a big whammy bar player.
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^ I am, and my RG470 lo-trs was on the way out after a few months.
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Yep, that's what I had. Kind of hard not to feel a little cheated isn't it?
Or am I being a bit naive in expecting a company like Ibanez to use good quality materials and components on their guitars? :?
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its funny you mention bout the ibanez trems. ive been looking for a trem for my project rg270 and cant find one thats a direct swap. all the pivot posts are too big!! the guitars about 4 years old when i took it apart to prep the body i noticed the knife edge was completely blunt. you could see where it had worn down. i knew it wasnt playing right but didnt realise the extent of the damage.
guess you really do get what you pay
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Here's my two cents, for what it's worth.
They can be good guitars, but if you're buy, make sure you play it first.
I tried several of different Mavericks about three years back, and two of them had apalling quality control issues, including fretwork which left the edge of the fingerboard feeling like it had nails poking out if it.
It's possible I was just unlucky, and they may be way better now. Just thought I'd share.
Never played a bad one myself.
Thanks for the heads-up!
There are obviously some issues.
If I've played maybe 7 or 8 mavericks, been impressed by 3 and found the rest perfectly decent for the price, add to that james's and daves count, adn yours then we start to see how long it takes to get round to ones with overt flaws.
A middling to good amount of time. Especially as the models arent mentionned here (were the poor ones cheap models?). Better than Gibosn QC, so far!
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The models I played (and bear in mind this was about three years back) were three F1s, one of which had the razor sharp fret ends, and a couple of F2s. On one of the F2s the rout for the pickup selector hadn't been correctly done, which meant that the bridge humbucker couldn;t be selected as the switch wouldn't go back far enough.
Needless to say, I didn't buy!
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Unlucky man! An f1 was one of the stars of the show for me.
Another plus for maverick: the stock pickups are about as good as stock pickups get. You may go weeks, or even months before putting BKs in :lol:
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Yeah, I remember being impressed by the sound, the pickups were a hell of a lot better than any similar priced Ibanez.
I ended up buying an ESP M302 because nowhere within a reasonable travelling distance had the Maverick model I wanted, and after coming across a couple of lemons, I wasn't willing to risk it on mail order.
The ESP now sports Warpigs, but I'm toying with the idea of selling it, having hit the nasty realisation that I basically suck as a metal player. :(
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Practice.
That may seem obvious to the point of useless, but if metals a part of what you want to do: if you listen to a metal track and want to run round the walls, then that energy takes real discipline to play.
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Yep, that's what I had. Kind of hard not to feel a little cheated isn't it?
Or am I being a bit naive in expecting a company like Ibanez to use good quality materials and components on their guitars? :?
I'm not naive any more, if that explains my outlook on things...
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Perhaps I should have said 'Was I being naive?' The Ibanez episode was over four years back, and in that time I have been told I've become incredibly cynical!
So much so that my first question when presented with something that looks to be a good deal is 'Where's the catch?'
Still haven't found a catch with BKPs though. :)
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yeah, that happened to me too, after the trem episode.
:D
:drink:
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Understandable really.
I dont mind buying a guitar and then three years later deciding I want something else because my playing style has changed, but I think it would take the paitence of a saint, not to mention the bank balance of Bill Gates not to get annoyed if the gear you'd just spent hard earned money on turned out to have flaws in it which could so easily have been avoided if the manufacturer has just paid a little more attention to detail.
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^ not even that, but purposefully put a sub-standard trem on it to try to safeguard the sales of the rg1550.
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Hhhmmm i bet you could open the gates of hell with these guitars! Not my cup of tea tho... being metal influenced guitars... where is the love? they look mass produced even, very sterile if u get what i mean.
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dave_mc, that's a damn good point - who'd buy an RG1550 if you could get almost the same spec for a load less cash, and chuck in a set of decent pickups with the money saved?
As far as the idea of guitars like these being sterile, I do understand to an extent. In terms of mass production, the look is almost inevitable in a way, but some companies mass produce guitars better than others.
However, guitars such as Ibanez and ESP (which I also play) feel like very little in the way of soul has gone into their design and construction, which is something I've started to find important recently, hence my latest purchase - Fender Tele.
I'm not saying all Ibanezs and ESPs are bad guitars - they aren't - simply that they can sometimes (particularly at the cheaper end of the scale) feel more like tools than musical instruments, which to me defeats the point slightly.
I hope this makes sense, but I doubt it! :wink:
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You hit the nail on the head.
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yeup - i'm with simon!
I quite like thinking of my Ibanez as a tool though tbh - i dont think it's lack of soul is a bad thing; it's a blank canvas, i can play anything on it.
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i have a maverick F1/Streetfighter cross. they have only made two of it. it was a prototype to see what would happen if they made the Streetfighter part of the F-range. it has the fretboard, hardware, pups and body of the Streetfighter and the Neck of an F1.
it's a bit of a shame the Streetfighter isn't available anymore, but my guitar really kicks ass.
i hope to get round to fitting BKs sometime around easter.
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I've had quite a few Mavericks including this purple f1/streetfighter cross, that was great but the trem wasnt the greatest. and 2 maverick species which are awesome guitars for the cash, there well made and feel great with there set-thru necks also really good for downtuning cause their designed to use 10-52 gauge strings. all in all i think their very good guitars. :P
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Maverick guitars have horrible trems. it's not that they go out of tune, it's because if you lean forward the trem bar falls off the guitar coz it's a drop in type that wears out easily. Mine does that, and my band's other guitarist's does that too (he just uses his palm these days; k-7 u-bar style). I'd buy a species and use the saved cash for locking tuners or something.
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This place has a limited run of streetfighters available (not cheap though)
http://www.guitarzone.co.uk/catalog/product_info.php?products_id=766&osCsid=bd04cf1fbd55b500d7e71fc11c85ce95
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As far as the idea of guitars like these being sterile, I do understand to an extent. In terms of mass production, the look is almost inevitable in a way, but some companies mass produce guitars better than others.
However, guitars such as Ibanez and ESP (which I also play) feel like very little in the way of soul has gone into their design and construction, which is something I've started to find important recently, hence my latest purchase - Fender Tele.
That's a very good and interesting point. I've owned mainly American guitars over the years, but I've had a few Japanese, Korean and Taiwanese ones too.
The Gibsons and Fenders may have dodgy quality control (well, the Gibsons especially), but they always feel to me like they're built by people who actually play guitar.
The Far Eastern guitars are immaculately put together, with fantastic attention to detail, but sometimes they feel like near-perfect copies of guitars, made by skilled craftsmen who don't quite understand what guitars actually are.
Is that being harsh? :?
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Maverick guitars have horrible trems. it's not that they go out of tune, it's because if you lean forward the trem bar falls off the guitar coz it's a drop in type that wears out easily. Mine does that, and my band's other guitarist's does that too (he just uses his palm these days; k-7 u-bar style). I'd buy a species and use the saved cash for locking tuners or something.
that's weird. i have a black original and that never happens. maybe it's the original vibrato bar with the ribs that's better than the new ones.
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Maverick guitars have horrible trems. it's not that they go out of tune, it's because if you lean forward the trem bar falls off the guitar coz it's a drop in type that wears out easily. Mine does that, and my band's other guitarist's does that too (he just uses his palm these days; k-7 u-bar style). I'd buy a species and use the saved cash for locking tuners or something.
that's weird. i have a black original and that never happens. maybe it's the original vibrato bar with the ribs that's better than the new ones.
Well, that's even stranger because my F1 is one of the original earlier ones without the pickup rings, i think it's a 2000 model. Also my band mate's is an X-treme, which is also an early model. BTW X-treme is an awesome guitar, try one if you come across one.
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Maverick guitars have horrible trems. it's not that they go out of tune, it's because if you lean forward the trem bar falls off the guitar coz it's a drop in type that wears out easily. Mine does that, and my band's other guitarist's does that too (he just uses his palm these days; k-7 u-bar style). I'd buy a species and use the saved cash for locking tuners or something.
that's weird. i have a black original and that never happens. maybe it's the original vibrato bar with the ribs that's better than the new ones.
Well, that's even stranger because my F1 is one of the original earlier ones without the pickup rings, i think it's a 2000 model. Also my band mate's is an X-treme, which is also an early model. BTW X-treme is an awesome guitar, try one if you come across one.
i met the guy who had the first one (X-TREME) at a Niel Brockelbank workshop.
Mine has no rings either. but the BKP's may need them, i don't know.