Ohai there! I've got a story for you...
Meanwhile me and my band Abiogenesis were recording our debut album some weeks ago, I already sold my JPXI 7, but needed a guitar capable of beautiful piezo-clean tones for our mellower parts.
Luckily, I've then been contacted by Claudio Rustignoli a.k.a. Rusti Guitars, a very talented young luthier from Italy.
I've been offered to babysit his piezo-equipped baritone 7 to use it during our recordings, so how could I refuse? :D
I was expecting something good, but not THIS good. When I held the guitar for the first time I immediately felt there was something special.
Specs are as follows:
27.7" scale
flamed maple/rosewood set neck
poplar body
ebony fretboard
quilted maple top
20" radius
24 nickel frets
Bareknuckle Mule pickups
Sperzel tuners
ABM bridge + Graphtech piezo system
The baritone scale suits the instrument nicely and is actually really comfortable to play with, thanks also to a nice thin-C shaped neck with a bit wider string spacing.
The wood combo provides tons of natural resonance, and the super thick maple top is a big part of it. Fingerboard is a piece of top quality ebony with all the good stuff you might expect from this tonewood: clarity, smoothness, and exceptional dynamic response.
I find Bareknuckle Mules exceptional in this particular instrument. Definitely the most "unpredictable" (in a good way) pickups I've ever encountered: from warm and intimate cleans to HUGE Metal machines when I engage my main rhythm tone! I've actually compared these pickups to my Blackmachine's Aftermath and my Daemoness' Warpig to see how they performed under high gain riffin', and they surely hold their own! For sure the extended scale helps, but these are tight and ballsy with lots of character/mojo.
I'm usually a stainless steel fret guy, but the fretwork is super good, every fret is well rounded and polished, no complains here. An extended scale guitar is not usually my choice for leads, but the 20" radius permits me to have good control of it even when soloing. No need to say it holds tuning like a mofo, the notes just stay in pitch regardless of how brutally you attack the strings. Because of that, I actually used it even on some distorted parts during our recordings.
But now comes the best part: the piezo! Having owned quite a handful of JPs I know how they respond to the piezo, and while they all sound awesome, this just sounds better. More natural, more "acoustic-like", not too shrill, the tone is just there. I would describe it as "three-dimensional".
Here you can listen to a SoundCloud playlist I've made, demonstrating all the pickup options that the 3-way mini switch provides. My favs are the "piezo only" one and "piezo+both BKP Mules", lemme know what are yours :)
The sample you hear is a tiny part of the very first
Abiogenesis track that will be released shortly.
http://soundcloud.com/francescofiligoi/sets/rusti7piezo
Hope you enjoyed this NGD, you can check Rusti's work at
Rusti Guitars | Facebook
