First off lets talk about the good things. I'd like to say that I have been playing this Charvel daily for over 2 months and I just can't seem to put it down. It feels amazing in the hands. The neck and body have a silky smooth finish and the guitar is quite light which means it's easy to hold and play for a long period of time without getting fatigued from the weight. The joint where the neck meets the body is superbly sculpted to allow a great fit for the hand, allowing smooth access to the upper frets.
It has a fairly thin neck that feels very similar to a Jackson soloist (which I also have for comparison). But it's not as thin or flat as an Ibanez wizard (which I also have) It's got just enough meat to the neck to really grab hold of for those big bends, but not so much that it hinders playing at speed. Of the many high end guitars that I own, this is my absolute favourite neck profile.
The fretwork from the factory was much better than expected. The fret wires are rounded very well so the neck feels as smooth as butter. There were no high spots or fret buzz right out of the box so I can say that they did a good job of fret leveling at the factory. I did however adjust the intonation slightly after playing it for a couple of weeks, but It was nothing major.
The mid output Seymour Duncans are very responsive allowing for a great range of tones both clean and heavily overdriven / distorted. (I play a lot of metal / hard rock). I find my playing sounds MUCH cleaner with this pair of mid output passive humbuckers as opposed to a pair of high output EMGs. As the body is quite thin and light, the bridge pickup can sound a bit twangy / bright, but that can be managed with the tone knob sitting at about 3/4. Where this guitar really shines is dialing up those metal tones from the 80s (Ozzy, Priest, Maiden) but it can also handle that scooped sound (Classic Metallica) as well as deeper dropped tones (Mastodon) Overall I am very impressed by how versatile these pickups are in this guitar.
As this is a hardtail, the tuning stability is wonderful. The locking tuners are very smooth and stable. I have tuned this thing down from E standard to both E flat standard and drop D with the tuning and intonation staying quite stable. (this is the great thing about a hard tail!) All in all this makes this guitar very flexible.
The one minor thing that I have had to do after a couple of months was tighten the input jack as it had loosened off, but nothing major.
Overall this is an amazing guitar that I am happy to have added to my collection. It's going to get a lot of use and I would totally purchase it again.
