C-1 FR SLS Elite Left-handed - Black Fade Burst Review

The most spec for your buck.

I've had this guitar for several months now, and still I am impressed with how well constructed it is and the appointments it has for a $ guitar. It's all the things a 2k guitar should have. 7 piece through neck, flamed maple top, extra tall jumbo frets, ebony fretboard, bound body and fretboard etc. The thin C neck is just so fast. It took me longest to bond with the fishman fluence… read more pickups, because honestly I don't like active pickups that much and I always expect them to sound like emg 81/88s. These do not. But the alternate passive voicing does great for me on the bridge pickup. I cannot imagine anyone getting this thing and being disappointed, and even though it looks like it's designed for shredding exclusively there's plenty of tone for anyone. Thanks to Nick for helping me out picking this thing up!

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The C-1 continues to evolve...

I just received this C-1 SLS Elite FR at the end of September, and I have had it for five days of this writing. The guitar was back-ordered, as so many things are right now- and Riley was very attentive about staying in touch and communicative throughout the process. The guitar is wild, and very different from either of the two other C-1's I have, including another SLS. Using… read more my C-1 Hellraiser FR as a starting point, the C-1 SLS FR I bought in 2015 not long after they started that line has a thinner body, thinner neck, and a different picking hand playing feel from having a less-pronounced arch to the top. The C-1 SLS Elite has an even thinner body that the OG SLS, and as such the carve on the arch top is even less-pronounced and really more aesthetic than anything. It's like an optical illusion; you see depth and curves when you look straight on and then when you hold it to play they're not there, and the guitar plays and feels almost like a flat-top. Insofar as the finish, I am kind of ambivalent about the trend of "finish in the front, splinters in the back"-thing, but this is done in a pretty unique way. The top is the gradation finish that has become in itself a trend lately, and someone said this looks like a freshly-poured pint of Guinness and now I can't unsee it. Something I haven't seen before- the back and the neck are not finished in gloss, but it doesn't seem like satin, either- it seems to be just some kind of oil rub or mineral finish. The look of it is nice- it highlights the five-piece neck, which is pretty cool. The swamp ash wings, with that oil rub finish, feel like raw wood. Going back to the neck, it has the the absolute smoothest ebony fingerboard I have ever played. It's smooth like polished volcanic glass, and it even looks the part- the wood is so dense that I can't really even see any grain at all. Mine has a cool-looking streak running over several frets. Ebony is supposed to have streaking like that, and I am glad they don't dye it. But the fingerboard is so smooth and glassy, and the stainless steel frets are a very nice touch. There are some rough fret ends, though, in the upper register. They're not terrible, and there aren't many, but I didn't expect that at this price point, nor from my empirical experiences buying other guitars from Schecter. The tuners are the same heavy-duty Grovers that are on the other Schecters I have, and they are so great. They feel really nice to use, they're smooth, they're solid, and they feel like an upscale appointment. The upgraded Floyd is sweet. For anyone that was wondering, the Floyd Rose 1500 is an OEM-only version of the Floyd Rose Hot Rod system, which upgrades the Original/1000 by adding a heavier block and stainless steel screws, and includes the push-in style arm as standard, in lieu of the arm with the screw-collar that most of the other Floyds use as the default option. Because there's no slop or wiggle in the up and down motion of the bar, the trem is more responsive and comes alive, and you can be more subtle with it it, giving chords controlled vibrato or for things like flutters and trills, etc. Awesome. And like the abalone offset-dot fret markers, the stainless steel appointments on the unit lend the guitar an understated look of upscale refinement. I really like the control layout; a pet peeve of mine is when the volume knob is super-close the bridge pickup, it gets in the way of my picking hand. Then there're the pickups. I really wanted to like them, but they are not for me. I should say the neck pickup is fine- the stock voicing is high-powered neck humbucker fun, and the 2nd voicing is actually magical with cleans- but the bridge pickup is challenging. The default voicing is what they call their 'Modern Active' sound, and it has all of the qualities in sound and feel to what I expected; it's very compressed and squishy-feeling to play, and there's this bump in the mids that I don't find musical, it's very much in the 'gross' frequency range and sounds a little like you just plugged into a Rockman. The second voicing is meant to be more of a PAF-thing, and it is more balanced and open, tonally, but it is also super-weak in terms of output. I went back and forth between this guitar and others I have with a Seymour Duncan Nazgul, Distortion, Hot Rails, JB, and Full Shred and they all smoked it in terms of output. Yeesh! Anyhoo, I know that I am going to have to replace the pickups, and likely sooner rather than later- but that is a glowing testament to how I feel about the guitar overall, that I am pleased enough with the playability, build quality, etc. to rip out the $250 pickup set it came with and still be okay...

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Sweet guitar!

This Schecter is awesome! Everything I was looking for and more. Plus Sweetwater's customer service is on another level just like this guitar! They are so attentive and accommodating with their setups, My next guitar purchase is going to be with these great people at sweetwater!

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