My 7 string Agile arrived yesterday. 27" scale 5 piece thru neck with mahogany wings and flame maple laminate. Carved top, Tonepros string thru TOM, ebony fret board, trans black finish. Price £320 delivered.
First impressions: OK, first off, all those people who go "oh, you must need really long fingers to play a 7, it's much harder than a 6" are just plain wrong. It's actually easier to play than a classical guitar (and the fingerboard width is probably about the same). I don't have particularly big hands, and it's no problem for me.
The neck is nice, just what I like, slim but not too slim, a nice soft flat backed C (it's kindof a cross between a C and a U). Very comfortable to play. I am TOTALLY sold on the uniform neck profile idea. Moving up and down the neck is ridiculously easy, and moveable chords and slides are a breeze. The ebony fretboard has a couple of very small areas of discolouration, but then most ebony isn't completely black anyway, and a friend of mine has a £3K PRS with the most hideously discoloured rosewood board, so I can live with it, and you can't see it unless you look close. It feels wonderful though, glass smooth and a real treat to play.
The cutaways are great, and the treble cutaway is HUGE and contoured, so playing the B string at the 24th fret is really easy. The heel is small and unobtrusive, although if I'd designed it I'd have smoothed it into the body.
The weight is very manageable, and the balance is good. The finish is flawless with no rough spots or untidy edges. The Set up is good, the frets are smooth and well finished, I just need to lower the action a little to my taste.
The unplugged sound is surprisingly dark for a guitar of it's construction. Note decay time is about 5-6 seconds.
Plugged in: Clean; The clean sounds are actually pretty good, lots of clear snap from the bridge pickup, solid thump from the neck pickup and brash sparkle from the middle position.
Crunch; Again, fairly good with a hot rock tone, nice bark from the bridge, with good snap and clarity,and a fluid, growling honk from the neck, which loosens up nicely with some added honk as you roll the tone off.
Distorted; All kindof falls apart here. Bass response is way too flabby, and the sound just becomes loose and woolly. The tone of the amp tends to swamp the guitar tone,and individual notes don't cut through enough. Maybe if I fiddled with EQ some more, and ran it through a compressor it might be better, but certainly not as good tones as clean or crunch.
EDIT: OK, just tried it with a drier tone and less bass, more of a Petrucci sort of tone, and it's much tighter, with good harmonics. The thing just keeps incouraging me to churn out filthy riffs :twisted: I must say musically I'm loving the 7th string. Metal techniques I found really unsatisfying on a 6 come to life with a seven. I think the fact that my Ashdown just comes to life with the extra bass input helps.
All in all, for the money this is an awesome guitar, and TBH for any money it's a pretty good guitar. With the addition of some BKs this guitar will be fantastic, and definitely a "keeper" come what may. I will definitely be buying from Rondo again, their great range of "specialty" guitars (7 string, 12 string, baritone, fretless), and their balance of solid build and great price will see to that. I quite fancy getting one of their Lesters for modding.
