mharr552000
New member
I said I’d post this in another thread, so here you go:
I’ll start this off by saying that I have a 22 year relationship with B. C. Rich guitars. Over the years I have owned 11 of them. The 2007 Neck Thru Warlock I received last night just might be the last. I was stoked when the box arrived. Dropped off by the Fed Ex guy at 9 pm. I cut the box open with the excitement and anticipation of a kid on Christmas morning.
You see I was flirting with other manufacturers because I really wanted a guitar with an Original Floyd Rose. My experience with the licensed Floyd bridges isn’t so hot. Being made of inferior materials, the knife edges dull quickly thus preventing the bridge from returning to its original position. But when the specs for the 2007 guitars were released my eyes strayed no more. The new NJ Warlock had an Original Floyd! Throw that in with a no-heel neck thru design and a 24 fret neck with an ebony fretboard and my list of features was satisfied. Add in the fact that this was a fucking Warlock…….Oh, the glory!
Since none were listed anywhere on-line, I started calling around to the brick and mortar stores that sell new B. C. Riches on eBay. The 2007 models were trickling in, and the NJ Warlocks should be arriving shortly. Larry at Beat Street Music in Maryland quoted a price of $525. That’s over $100 less than the 2006 NJ Neck Thru guitars were going for. This just keeps getting better.
So I sell some gear on eBay that I’ve got laying around to raise some money. The day after my last auction closes Beat Street Music posts a 2007 NJ Warlock on eBay. They have arrived. I call and place my order. Four days later that big flat box is propped up against my front door.
I lift the lid off of the box. There it is. All wrapped up in bubble wrap and that weird thin foam bag thing that they put the guitars in. I notice that the bag has been cut down the middle. Cool, they checked it out and possibly even set the bastard up for me. Sweet. I just want to see that Floyd, so I pull back the foam to reveal the pick ups. Just a little more…..the excitement is breathtaking. Hmmm…that’s funny. It’s got “Licensed Floyd Rose Design Pat.” stamped into it. FUCK!
Let’s go check the website again. Cut and pasted directly off of the NT Warlock page, “Bridge / Tailpiece: Floyd Rose original tremolo”. Well if that ain’t a crock of shit! I’d call strike one, but that is the only strike I need. This bastard is going back and I haven’t even taken it out of the box yet. I might as well give it a once over since it’s sitting right here in front of me. So I take it out of the box and strip all of the packaging off of it. First thing I notice is that on the tremolo rout by the bar thread, bare wood is showing through the clear coat (strike 2). On the opposite side of the rout where “Floyd Rose” should be stamped into the bridge, there is a rough patch that looks and feels like the inside of a pick-up cavity (strike 3). I flip it over and examine the back of the body. There are noticeable indented lines where the neck runs through the body. Since this is a painted guitar, I shouldn’t be able to see at all. Even if it was a stained finish I shouldn’t be able to feel it (strike 4). As I make my way up the neck I notice that the inlay work is kind of sloppy (strike 5). The routs for the inlays are huge. A lot of filler is visable. On the high E side of the locking nut the black finish is so thin that the bare metal is showing (strike 6). Our tour comes to an end at the headstock. Man, this thing is a mess. It’s got a lot of small scratches on it (strike 7). The inside curves of the Widow headstock look and feel the same as the pick-up cavity finish on the bridge rout (strike 8). There is an extremely poorly done paint touch up that looks like a 5 year old did it with a White Out brush (strike 9). Seeing how this guitar was built in China that might just be the case. Either the quality control at the factory is nonexistent or this is a ‘B’ stock guitar. I could see this sort of thing on a $150 guitar, but the fit and finish on a $500-$600 guitar should be flawless.
Hell, I’m sitting here holding this guitar so I might as well play it. I give it an open strum. Curiously, it is perfectly in tune with itself. I run through the open cowboy chords, E, G, A, C & D. The guys at Beat Street HAD to have taken this thing out of the box. There is no way this guitar came all the way from China and is still in tune. They also placed a business card inside of an accessory bag. I don’t see how they could have taken this guitar out of the box, held it, spent the time to tune it and not notice that the fit and finish was total shit.
I went ahead and played every note on the neck just for kicks. The low E string buzzed like a hornet nest from the 7th fret on up, the A string from the 9th fret on up, the D string from the 12th fret, the G string from the 15th fret and the B and high E were fine. A bridge adjustment would probably fix it. But since I’m sending this turd back, I see no reason to mess with it. The strings were very tight across the fretboard. It was quite difficult to bend the strings, they looked like 10s, and the bridge was pretty stiff and hard to move by pressing and pulling on it with my fingers (I didn’t bother screwing the bar in). Once again, I’m not wasting an hour or so of my time to set this thing up.
One last complaint, Warlocks are supposed to be metal guitars. People who play metal usually do some pretty technical lead work. So why in the seven Hells does this guitar have a neck that feels like you are wrapping your monkey digits around a can of creamed corn? This thing is huge. And round. Very round. I’ve played some Gibson Les Pauls that had pretty fat necks, but they have nothing on this tree trunk. It is definitely not what I would call a ‘fast neck.’
If I saw this guitar in a music store I would have taken a look at it because it is a Warlock, but the flaws are so obvious that I wouldn’t have felt the need to take it off of the wall. I’ve spent years defending B. C. Rich from the masses of people who claim that they make crappy guitars for metal kids to fawn over. My experience with them has always been good, and I’ve recorded two albums using nothing but B. C. Rich guitars and basses. Even if the fit and finish were flawless, as it should have been, and even if they did not falsely advertise an Original Floyd Rose, I would still send this guitar back simply because of its rounded gargantuan neck that my little hand can barely wrap around. What were they thinking?
Strike 10. Your out.
I’ll start this off by saying that I have a 22 year relationship with B. C. Rich guitars. Over the years I have owned 11 of them. The 2007 Neck Thru Warlock I received last night just might be the last. I was stoked when the box arrived. Dropped off by the Fed Ex guy at 9 pm. I cut the box open with the excitement and anticipation of a kid on Christmas morning.
You see I was flirting with other manufacturers because I really wanted a guitar with an Original Floyd Rose. My experience with the licensed Floyd bridges isn’t so hot. Being made of inferior materials, the knife edges dull quickly thus preventing the bridge from returning to its original position. But when the specs for the 2007 guitars were released my eyes strayed no more. The new NJ Warlock had an Original Floyd! Throw that in with a no-heel neck thru design and a 24 fret neck with an ebony fretboard and my list of features was satisfied. Add in the fact that this was a fucking Warlock…….Oh, the glory!
Since none were listed anywhere on-line, I started calling around to the brick and mortar stores that sell new B. C. Riches on eBay. The 2007 models were trickling in, and the NJ Warlocks should be arriving shortly. Larry at Beat Street Music in Maryland quoted a price of $525. That’s over $100 less than the 2006 NJ Neck Thru guitars were going for. This just keeps getting better.
So I sell some gear on eBay that I’ve got laying around to raise some money. The day after my last auction closes Beat Street Music posts a 2007 NJ Warlock on eBay. They have arrived. I call and place my order. Four days later that big flat box is propped up against my front door.
I lift the lid off of the box. There it is. All wrapped up in bubble wrap and that weird thin foam bag thing that they put the guitars in. I notice that the bag has been cut down the middle. Cool, they checked it out and possibly even set the bastard up for me. Sweet. I just want to see that Floyd, so I pull back the foam to reveal the pick ups. Just a little more…..the excitement is breathtaking. Hmmm…that’s funny. It’s got “Licensed Floyd Rose Design Pat.” stamped into it. FUCK!
Let’s go check the website again. Cut and pasted directly off of the NT Warlock page, “Bridge / Tailpiece: Floyd Rose original tremolo”. Well if that ain’t a crock of shit! I’d call strike one, but that is the only strike I need. This bastard is going back and I haven’t even taken it out of the box yet. I might as well give it a once over since it’s sitting right here in front of me. So I take it out of the box and strip all of the packaging off of it. First thing I notice is that on the tremolo rout by the bar thread, bare wood is showing through the clear coat (strike 2). On the opposite side of the rout where “Floyd Rose” should be stamped into the bridge, there is a rough patch that looks and feels like the inside of a pick-up cavity (strike 3). I flip it over and examine the back of the body. There are noticeable indented lines where the neck runs through the body. Since this is a painted guitar, I shouldn’t be able to see at all. Even if it was a stained finish I shouldn’t be able to feel it (strike 4). As I make my way up the neck I notice that the inlay work is kind of sloppy (strike 5). The routs for the inlays are huge. A lot of filler is visable. On the high E side of the locking nut the black finish is so thin that the bare metal is showing (strike 6). Our tour comes to an end at the headstock. Man, this thing is a mess. It’s got a lot of small scratches on it (strike 7). The inside curves of the Widow headstock look and feel the same as the pick-up cavity finish on the bridge rout (strike 8). There is an extremely poorly done paint touch up that looks like a 5 year old did it with a White Out brush (strike 9). Seeing how this guitar was built in China that might just be the case. Either the quality control at the factory is nonexistent or this is a ‘B’ stock guitar. I could see this sort of thing on a $150 guitar, but the fit and finish on a $500-$600 guitar should be flawless.
Hell, I’m sitting here holding this guitar so I might as well play it. I give it an open strum. Curiously, it is perfectly in tune with itself. I run through the open cowboy chords, E, G, A, C & D. The guys at Beat Street HAD to have taken this thing out of the box. There is no way this guitar came all the way from China and is still in tune. They also placed a business card inside of an accessory bag. I don’t see how they could have taken this guitar out of the box, held it, spent the time to tune it and not notice that the fit and finish was total shit.
I went ahead and played every note on the neck just for kicks. The low E string buzzed like a hornet nest from the 7th fret on up, the A string from the 9th fret on up, the D string from the 12th fret, the G string from the 15th fret and the B and high E were fine. A bridge adjustment would probably fix it. But since I’m sending this turd back, I see no reason to mess with it. The strings were very tight across the fretboard. It was quite difficult to bend the strings, they looked like 10s, and the bridge was pretty stiff and hard to move by pressing and pulling on it with my fingers (I didn’t bother screwing the bar in). Once again, I’m not wasting an hour or so of my time to set this thing up.
One last complaint, Warlocks are supposed to be metal guitars. People who play metal usually do some pretty technical lead work. So why in the seven Hells does this guitar have a neck that feels like you are wrapping your monkey digits around a can of creamed corn? This thing is huge. And round. Very round. I’ve played some Gibson Les Pauls that had pretty fat necks, but they have nothing on this tree trunk. It is definitely not what I would call a ‘fast neck.’
If I saw this guitar in a music store I would have taken a look at it because it is a Warlock, but the flaws are so obvious that I wouldn’t have felt the need to take it off of the wall. I’ve spent years defending B. C. Rich from the masses of people who claim that they make crappy guitars for metal kids to fawn over. My experience with them has always been good, and I’ve recorded two albums using nothing but B. C. Rich guitars and basses. Even if the fit and finish were flawless, as it should have been, and even if they did not falsely advertise an Original Floyd Rose, I would still send this guitar back simply because of its rounded gargantuan neck that my little hand can barely wrap around. What were they thinking?
Strike 10. Your out.
...not nice!...