Purchased from: Musician's Friend
Features: This is a B.C. Rich Kerry King Wartribe KKWGW1, not sure when it was made but it was made in China. It features 24 jumbo frets, a 25.5" scale, an unfinished bolt-on maple neck with rosewood fingerboard, and a pretty thin neck. It has no inlays except for one tribal-style inlay on the 12th fret. The body is made of mahogany. It features an onyx body with a red tribal flame graphic on the beveled Warlock style body and Beast style headstock. The bridge is a Kahler X-Trem Hybrid tremolo with a locking nut. This guitar comes stock with two humbucking B.C. Rich BDSM pickups which are passive. There is one tone knob, one volume knob, and a three-way pickup switch. The tuners are B.C. Rich die cast tuners. All of the hardware is black. The guitar came with two Allan keys for the locking nut, an Allan key for the truss rod, and an instruction booklet for the tremolo system. I would have liked it to come with a case or a gig bag, because of its unnatural body shape it is hard to find a case that will fit it. I ended up using the gig bag that came with my Jackson Warrior, and that almost destroyed the case after awhile. It does not fit in generic hard cases, they have to be special made. // 7
Sound: I play everything from punk to metal to even blues. This guitar is made for metal music, as is clear, but handles other things fairly well also. It sounds pretty good for metal, but I would like to change the pickups to DiMarzios or Seymour Duncans. It handles cleans alright, another fault of the pickups. I have 9 gauge Elixir strings on it, and they sound very good. I reserve this guitar to play more metal than anything else, because that is its strong point. I use this guitar with a Line 6 Spider IV 75 primarily, and it gets a pretty good tone out of it when I tweak it a bit. The humbuckers do their job, and they are not noisy at all. The bridge pickup gets a fairly good rhythm sound and the neck pickup gets an alright lead sound. I prefer the EMGs in my Schecter Hellraiser Deluxe. This guitar does metal well and punk pretty well also, whereas it handles things like blues a little worse. I use the neck pickup to play blues and cleans, and the pickup doesn't have that warm kind of tone you'd want for your cleans (or at least I would) and doesn't sound very bluesy. The pickups themselves aren't very different in sound, they make very slight changes, whereas the EMGs in my Schecter are very noticeably different in sound. The BDSM pickups should be replaced if you want to play lots of different styles with it. Also, because of the fact that it's a bolt-on with a tremolo system, the sustain isn't nearly as good as my other guitars with string-thru Tune-O-Matics. // 5
Action, Fit & Finish: The guitar was set up pretty well from the factory, action was pretty good and it was in tune. The pickups were adjusted very well. The bridge was pretty well routed, although it took some slight adjustment. The guitar did not come with any flaws, it was practically ready to play out of the box. The pickup selector is pretty noisy though. Also, if you're on the neck pickup, and you so much as slightly touch the pickup selector, it will go to the middle position. It doesn't switch to any other position this easily. As I said, the bridge needed a slight adjustment. The Kahler Hybrid is designed to be both a floating tremolo and a fixed bridge, with the removal/addition of a small screw used to fix it in place. Both work very well, and the guitar stays in tune perfectly when you do dive bombs and such. The fine tuners are also very good, and they can even tune down an entire step if you want them to. // 8
Reliability & Durability: This guitar has withstood live playing multiple times. The hardware does seem like it will last, as I have had no problems with it, the input didn't even come loose as it usually does with guitars of mine. The strap buttons are solid, but I got strap locks anyway, because the strap isn't dependable. I was playing it one day when the strap came loose and the guitar fell to the ground on it's headstock. Part of the headstock chipped off, but other than that no damage was done. It's a solid guitar. I almost thought the entire spike would come off. I can depend on it, yes, but I would not gig without a backup because it's got a locking nut that makes it a pain to do alternate tunings with. And the fine tuners, yes, can go down a whole step, but that depends on how loose/tight they are, because they may not be able to either go to that step or go back depending on how loose/tight they are. The finish is pretty thin, but I think it will last because it's only chipped when I inevitably hit the spikes on something. My only other complaint about this guitar is that it's pretty unbalanced, the neck side being heavier than the body side, causing it to slide a bit when standing up, making it harder to play. The guitar is pretty heavy itself, being made of mahogany. // 8
Impression: This is a pretty good match for the style of music I play. It can pull off things like Metallica and The Black Dahlia Murder, and even Avenged Sevenfold to the Smashing Pumpkins, AFI and Foo Fighters. Sure, while it's not the greatest at the latter, it's a pretty good metal guitar for the price range. I have been playing for 3 years now. I own a Jackson JS32T Warrior, a Schecter Hellraiser Deluxe, a Yamaha FG700S, and a Line 6 Spider IV 75. It looks a hell of a lot better than the Warrior, and it sounds pretty good too, but the Warrior does drop tunings and cleans a bit better. It's also not nearly as good as my Schecter. I have used this guitar through a Marshall MG50FX as well as even a Roland Cube, and it sounds pretty good in both of those. There's nothing I wish I would have asked before I purchased this, except maybe if I was getting my money's worth. I think it should have been priced a bit lower, or if they were going to charge $500 at least put some better pickups in it. If it were stolen, I would definitely get another because even with all of its problems, it's still a good guitar and I quite like it. The things I love about it are the tremolo system, the shape, and the finish. They're just really awesome. I didn't really compare it to other products, I just saw this one day on Musician's Friend, and decided to buy it after reading up on the specs. I wish it had better pickups (I don't know how many more times I can reiterate that), and that's about all. It's really a good guitar for someone who plays metal and not much else, but it doesn't do cleans very well with the current pickups. // 7
And composingwise... There's not many riffs better than those that Slayer do... And just thinking of Slayer with a slow melodic solo makes me laugh my ass off, for that fast music, you need to have superfast shredding type of solos to make it fit, and if you listen carefully, you'll find hints of melody and not just divebombs and fast scales.
but this guitar is not bad