Deepavali '24

Deepavali greetings, dear friends & blog readers. A Thursday holiday would usually entail a strong inertia to return to work the following day. Anyway, it's a good rest day for me, hope it's likewise to you if you are not doing your festive visits. I stayed indoors, managed to re-string a couple of guitars. Happy.

Goodbye, October... 

Pic: Floristique

Ibanez: October '24 (2)

The other 'new' Ibanez model this October is this blue RG8870 - they call this finish sodalite. FYI, the existing / older RG8870 is a black guitar.

For variety's sake, there's also this natural-esque finish which the manufacturer refers to as brownish sphalerite. Reminder - the special feature of this guitar is its chambered body.

Pic: Ibanez

KX700

A new one by Cort: KX700TT. That TT there stands for True Temparament frets, those wavy (steel) frets you see here. This kinked design offers a true tuning manifestation. The guitar, according to learned, bionic-eared musicians, are slightly out of tune at various positions across the fretboard so those kinks serve to correct that anomaly. If you actually hear this out-of-tune phenomenon  happening every time you play, this might be for you but it's gonna set you back a good $2.5k (available at Swee Lee now). In addition to that, you will also get a state of the art Schaller fixed bridge & Fluence pickups. Personally, my idea of a Cort is affordability + no-frills. That asking price is a little too much, really. 

Pic: Cort

Burbage

The new other guitarist in Cradle of Filth is Donny Burbage. He has good chops, definitely. Looked him up & he's on Ibanez's endorser roster which stated he's using the RGT1221 (above) & an RGDR4327. Ever since Richard Shaw departed, my interest in COF waned a little owing to the combo of disinterest (COF is really black metal) & the fact that COF is Danny Filth. That inclined highlight is sometimes taking away deserving attention from really good players in the band as exemplified by Shaw. FYI, the RGT1221 is available @ Swee Lee for $1,899 (Premium, MII)

Pic: Richard H

F 7

There's a 7-string revival of sorts in the Fender camp. It seems that they're beta testing a proto model 7-string & they are hyping things up by saying it's been perfected in time for regular production soon. Soon here might be Winter NAMM '25 considering it's already the tail end of the year & Fender don't usually release new stuff in November / December. 

Fender had dabbled with the 7-string idea before, this revival might be hoodwinking us into re-accepting a 7-string with the Fender name at the headstock. As it was, players rather go with a non-Fender 7-string. The attempt to make a Fender more accessible by subverting it into the Squier offerings didn't bode well for the manufacturer. There had been no 7-string models in both the Fender & Squier camps for a while & they should keep it that way.

Since Fender owns Jackson / Charvel / EVH - these names possess a stronger pulling power when it comes to 7-strings. Ideally, these names should handle the 7-string domain. Then again, we do not have details to see the bigger picture. The grand scheme of things might be to conceive a semi-unaffordable 7-string Fender & pushing players to buy the watered down Mexican versions of even Squiers. Ibanez, ESP, Solar are staple names when it comes to the 7-string appeal. Trying to dislodge them from the 7-string market would require a tremendous amount of inside knowledge / effort that would most likely lead to a misallocation of resources / funds. 

Pics: Fender YT / Richtone

Star TOM

I'm neither a signature model fan nor a fan of protrusive body shapes like this new EVH Star TOM but the single pickup is definitely my thing. The fact that there's no FR bridge in there means it'll bring the price down a wee bit more. This is so GAS-inducing but that kill switch... deal breaker (for me).

Pic: EVH