Can any guitar aficionados help me out??

[whyteand82nd]

http://www.ibanez.com/eg/series.aspx?s=orm

Can anyone talk to me about this guitar? I'm interested in getting it, i've played the models it's based on and they sound good. But can anyone analyze the specs for me??

It would be most appreciated.

[tomEisenbraun]

Can't argue with the styling but there's a couple things you'll want to take into consideration here:

1) This is a guitar custom made for someone's sound. I owned an LTD KH-502 (the Kirk Hammet signature guitar, but the cheap LTD series version), and while it was cool, I did find that it was never really my guitar. It was Kirk Hammet's, and I was just borrowing his sound for a while. Plus, my tastes grew and I didn't want to be defined by Metallica anymore, so I sold it. That said, Omar Rodriguez Lopez is bad-ass as hell, and outgrowing the Mars Volta may not be the same as outgrowing Metallica, but it's still not a guitar that just invites you to make it yours, as its already got a different name on it. Like I said, this is built for someone else originally. Which takes me to number...

2) It only only has one mini-humbucker in the bridge position, and only a volume knob. I can't see the back of it, but I'm betting the controls cavity is only big enough to house the volume knob and output jack, so modding that to hold a tone knob won't be easy if you decide you'd like a little more tonal versatility. On top of that, it basically has a Seymour Duncan Hot Rails siting in the bridge spot, almost surface mounted, as it's sitting very shallow against the body. Seeing as the body's made of mahogany, this is already not going to be a light guitar, especially with the fatter wings and sides. However, the reason a Les Paul can get away with a mahogany body and not kill your shoulders (most of the time) is because there is suuficient amounts of routing for the neck and bridge full-size humbuckers, along with a control cavity routed for two volume and two tone knobs, which cuts out about a good pound of pretty dense heavy wood. With this, you've got a big mahogany body, which will not sit happily on your should for an extended length of time. Also, it is a very hard dense wood, which will make adding in a neck humbucker, or even modding out the cavity to allow a full-size bridge humbucker, quite a difficult process, as mahogany is terrible for trying to rout.

That said, it's also a 24" scale guitar. A Strat or Telecaster is 25.5" from nut to bridge. A Les Paul is 24.75" from nut to bridge, and you can feel a significant drop in tension between the two. It allows for a little bit more leeway in the artificial harmonics department, a little bit easier chording (but that also accounts for the neck radius difference between the two), and easier bending. It can, however make your guitar difficult to downtune very much, and it can make your playing intensity suffer, as the strings don't have as much "snap" to them when you go to really grind in. Stevie Ray Vaughan wouldn't beStevie Ray Vaughan if he played on .009's instead of .013's-- those let him really dig the hell in and just grind away.

Now take that 24.75" of your LP and subtract another .75 and you get even floppier strings. Have you ever played a Fender Mustang? If you can't find the ORM1 in a guitar shop, look for a Fender Mustang and see how you like the scale. It's a very specialized feel--works great for people with small hands. If you've got bigger hands, you'll probably feel like you're crowding out your frets. You'll almost need to play with .010's at the least to get any good bite to your tone (which you might have some trouble with with so much mahogany in the first place).

Okay, I've been ripping this guitar apart. I'll stop, because here's what I dig about it. Ultimately it's your pick. I'll give you my opinion (which you've probably mostly seen by now, but I've got a little left to say).

This guitar looks kickass. It's short scale-length will be great for you if you have smaller hands. Otherwise, I'd think twice about it. With so much mahogany, it'll probably be pretty burdensome on your shoulder. A 2" strap should remedy this, though, if you like it enough to put up with the weight. So much mahogany will give you a very mellow tone, which is great, but there is no neck pickup to cash in on the creamy mellow opportunities that could await you. Also, the rail pickup design for the bridge pickup may or may not pick up on this mellowness either--these tend to have a rather even, modern sounding response to them, which can be good or bad depending on how you play. Still, you can get a fuller, airier, woodier tone out of a full-sized pickup, and you can also change a full-size pickup out for more options to get optimal tone out of the machine. Modding this one won't be terribly easy if you'd like that extra pickup or extra tone knob. There's always the option of concentric volume/tone pots, which could work fine, but you'll still have your work set out for you with a router. I don't know if that interests you or not, but I find I enjoy neck or inbetween much more than straight up bridge position for most of my playing. Once again, that's my opinion, but my thought it, why limit yourself? A one humbucker, one volume knob guitar with 22 frets is essentially this:



with a much better name attached. You pay more for a great name and cool styling, but you lose functionality. Omar probably requested the one pickup because he found that was all he ever used live. I'm sure he has a guitar with a neck pickup in the studio. Knowing him, he probably has lots. So will this be your main guitar? Are you moving on up from a starter guitar into the realm of your first good instrument? If so, I definitely would not choose this one. I would go with something a bit more regularly-styled and find what you need and don't need, and what tone you prefer. Save some money to swap the pickups around (and I can give you some good advice with what to try out there, if you're interested) and find your ideal tone. Give yourself some good options, to make sure you haven't made an investment into something that doesn't have everything you need out of it. That's just frustrating.

However, if you know you dig the Hot Rails sound, never use your neck pickup EVER, love mahogany body tone and really dig a short scale guitar--Go for it. If Omar's name on it is enough for you, that's cool, too--but this thing was not built to be an everyman's guitar.

I'd like to hear your feedback on my feedback, and hear about your playing style and tone-preferences and what experience guitar player you are, as well as where you are in your guitar ownership (are you looking for your first good guitar, etc) and I'll see if I can help you otu a little bit more pointedly. This has been more of a "what does Tom think about this guitar for himself?" rather than "what does Tom think about this guitar for you."

I'd love to help out more, so if you could give me a little more detail, I'll do my absolute best.

(Also, I've worked in a guitar repair shop for three years, and mahogany really is a bitch to rout. It can fracture and splinter off in big pieces so easily it isn't funny.)

[Jaimoe]

Where was the guitar made? I have no interest in any guitar made overseas, except maybe in Japan.

[whyteand82nd]

Wow. Tom, thanks so much. hah Well damn. damn damn damn. ha thats alot of information to be thrown at me at one time. but ok i have to sttart somewhere.

I am a bassist, and recently switched over to guitar (3 or 4 months ago) and i'd say i'm pretty good for only playing for that long.
I've been playing on an Epiphone Dot semi-hollow and honestly i hate it, i think it sounds bad, real limited tonaly, and its heavy and awkward. With that said I really want to sell it to my local music shop and get "my" first guitar.
But..I want that guitar to be one that i can be content with and never really wanna upgrade.

I started learning guitar because i felt limited on the Bass and i want a really diverse guitar. So i dont think this one is for me.....It seems like nothing about it suites me.

I've been playing guitars at music stores recently and i'm really liking the Strats and Teles (but then again who doesnt?)
I'm thinking a Strat might be what i'm looking for.

[tomEisenbraun]

If you're digging Strat and Tele tone, might I make a suggestion? There's a thing called the Fender Nasvhille Tele. It's essentially a Tele with a middle pickup thrown in with Strat spec's on it, so you can get those great in-between tones on it. Not to be a music whore at all, but if you want to hear what one of those things can do with that middle coil, I spent some good time with my friend on drums after I got mine about two years ago and we recorded what happened here: http://www.reverbnation.com/tomeisenbraun (check out the Larmon House tracks). I'd say it's pretty a pretty versatile instrument. (Listen to september 10 for how it sounds on a clean channel playing more melodic stuff on the neck/mid position).

When going with Strats and Teles, there's a couple consideration points here between your basics.

Hardware
There's really not a huge gap between American and Mexican-made ones. They use it as a selling point for the higher-up models, but (this is opinion) I'm not diggin' it. I think the slightly rougher hardware on the Mex's actually make for a little bit ballsier of an instrument. It's not that the hardware makes them bad guitars, either--you just get the newest and "smoothest" with the American guitars.

Pickups
Don't go Noiseless. They'll try and upcharge you on it and claim it's better, but they are really quiet and only really good for hi-fi studio-type work. Not great for rocking, or doing anything without a rack set-up.

Frets
Take a good look at this. There's a lot of 21 fret models of Fender guitars, and a lot of 22 fret models. I thought it would limit my style to not have 22 frets (especially after I had the full 24 on the Kirk Hammet guitar), but it really just helped enforced moving out of that box way up high on the neck for soloing. It really doesn't make much difference, but it if it's a place you play a lot and solo a lot on, I can understand it being a necessary fret to have.

Whammy Bar
Here's the splitter between the Strat and the Tele. While I've been aching for a whammy bar for a while now, I'm actually really glad I don't have one on my Tele. Its sound is huge because the strings run from the bridge to the back of the guitar and are surrounded in the guitar's wood, which makes for huge resonance and really great, sustaining tone. Strats get that sustain in a little different way--the strings run into the tremolo block to the back of the guitar, which is suspended by springs and, if you set it up correctly, touching the wood a little bit. However, this connection is not as solid, and the sustain suffers a little for it.

The whammy bar is, admittedly, cool as hell. However, its necessity should be a factor in its possession. Do you need one? A whammy bar can be finnicky, and can be hard to play around sometimes, as if it's not set-up very tightly, your strings will bend out of tune as a response to one string being bent. This is not one of my favorite sounds. However[/] you can set it up to not do this, and it won't be an issue, but your whammy bar will be a little harder to press down. If you want that whammy bar, it's all worth it, though. In my opinion, I'm glad that my main guitar doesn't have one for me to need to worry about mesing with, though it might be cool for a future guitar? If were to get any sort of whammy bar, it'd probably push more towards a Bigsby or a full-on Floyd Rose, just because you can divebomb the hell out of those and not worry about keeping your guitar in tune (listen to Hendrix divebombing his Strat and then having to deal with getting the thing back in tune afterwards--it's a little rough without a locking nut to keep everything in order.

Fretboard wood
Strats and Teles are made with Maple and Rosewood fretboards. There is a big tone difference between the two. Maple is very bright and snappy, and can actually be a little lacking in the "grind-ier" end of things, while Rosewood is kind of the middle of the road tonewise, being a good balance between too snappy and too dark. I prefer a Rosewood neck, as it doesn't give my tone too much treble and snap (I'm all about lower mids) and it has good sustain without being too muddied out.

Headstock
Really not a huge deal, except aesthetically. I dig the Tele's, and I also dig the late 60's/early 70's giant Strat headstocks. Its really not a big deal function-wise (some might argue about its effect on sustain--I don't have any trouble on my Tele though), and I'd say not to let it be much of an influence.

The Neck Pickup
With the Nashville Tele, you get a little hotter of a bridge pickup than the Strat, but the real choice here is your neck pickup. You'll hear lots of arguments between the two, and there's no right answer but personal preference. Here's what I think, but I'm no expert and you shoudl hear for yourself. I prefer the Tele's sound. I think the tone is "rounder" and offers a bit more beautiful of a sound than the Strat's. Strat pickups aren't my favorite, and the neck position seems to benefit from the Tele's more bell-like, chimey tones. Once again, personal preference.

Tele:
http://www.fender.com/products/search.php?partno=0135300367

Strat (Roadhouse--very kickass Texas pickups):
http://www.fender.com/products//search.php?partno=0139312380

They've got a lot more, but these seem to be right around the same price range.

Cheers,
Tom

[whyteand82nd]

Ok. I'll check them out. Thanks a bunch for all your help.

i'll take a few trips to the store, play some guitars and hopefully make my decision.
i'll keep you informed

[tomEisenbraun]

Wonderful!! Best advice I can give is just to set a bydget range for yourself and try anything and everything in that range. See what fits you an narrow it down! Let me know if there's any other way I can help!

[whyteand82nd]

Can do!!

thanks so much for all your help. I REALLY REALLY appreciate it

[whyteand82nd]

Ok so i played around. found a guitar i liked, haggled and such and here are the end results.
I payed $500 and traded in my epiphone for a Fender Roadhouse Strat. Carmel colored. VERY nice.
It just needs a setup BAD, it wont stay in tune for more than 5 min.
but i'll get that taken care of...

My only question is: it says it has Active 12db Gain boost controls...well how do i activate/deactivate those? I'm assuming through the pot on the first tone knob..am i mistaken?

[tomEisenbraun]

Is this it?



Looks like you've two cool tone knobs here--Think of your setup as Volume, Tone 1, Tone 2 -- Tone 1 is a cool "Delta Tone" tone knob that, unlike a regular tone knob set-up, completely bypasses the tone capacitor. This means that, instead of getting a minimally affected tone, you get tone straight from your pickups into your amp.

Tone 2 is your 12dB active mid-boost. At the 0 position, there's no effect. As you gradually turn it clockwise toward ten, you'll hear the lower-mids and bass become more boosted while the treble is gradually rolled off. I think you ought to be able to get some serious "Woman tone" with this thing--as well as some good "American Woman". Sounds like a killer set-up.

About your set-up, here's a deal. Since you'd be out $30 minimum to get a set-up on this thing, I have an idea. Keep that $30 in your wallet, and next week on the 29th, you put it towards gas to get to Athens and bring your guitar. I worked in a guitar repair shop for three years doing primarily set-ups, and would be more than pleased to set this sucker up for you before or after the listening--all you need to bring is the strings you want on it--no money owed. My boss trusted me enough with his business to let me be the guy in charge of set-ups and small repairs for the business, so I'll let that speak for the professionalism of my set-up. I would love to have you at this listening party, so why not take money you were going to spend elsewhere, and put it toward some kickass bowling, an MMJ listening party AND a free set-up?

Let me know for sure, but a friend of the Jacket's is a friend of mine, and I'd love to get you to this listening party!

[whyteand82nd]

AHh I freaking love this guitar!! ha Sorry, but i really do.

But...the setup comes free with the purchase...so yea.

But.. I did ask my mom if i could drive to Athens, and...she laughed.
I'll run it by her another time though. I really REALLY want to go though.