Matt300ZXT
Well-known member
After testing them out at Guitar Center today and not liking the Baretta Special but halfway digging the Pacer and coming home and looking more up on them, I decided to go back and get the passion purple or whatever it's called....though it's closer to a fuschia pinkish or something. Anyways, I had Guitar Center match their $379 price to Sweetwater of $299 so I came away with it.
I WAS going to immediately throw my spare OFR on but even after searching and before I left, I saw the internet say both studs were m7x0.5mm; they are not both that size. The OFR might be, but the FR Special is bigger and has a very fine thread. So one of these days I'll have to swap the bushings and studs over before I can install my OFR.
So after taping up the fretboard, working the hell out of the tarnished frets with 0000 steel wool along with the fret edges to do what I could for a few kinda sharp fret edges, and cleaning up and detaping, I got to work on restringing it. I had to reset the spring tension and bridge height to get it where I wanted. Then after stretching, tuning, stretching, tuning, rinse and repeat, I was able to get them to stay in tune so I could tweak the truss rod just a little, then retune and start intonating. 3 of the strings were dead on and 1 took just 1 little adjustment while the other 2 took a few, but still not hard to do. Now, 2 hours later, I can FINALLY play on it a little and see how it feels. It's not too bad!
My takeaway: the frets need better polishing and a wee bit of leveling in a spot or two on higher frets on the B and E strings. My friend and I should be able to do that at his shop with ease. The tuning keys are absolute garbage, and the string retainer blows. I'll have to order a better string retainer as the parts guitar the OFR came off of never had one on it. The pickups actually aren't bad, most people say they're actually decent. I don't think I'd be able to do much Zakk Wylde stuff with them but for just playing some good ol' 80s riffs and some lead work, they'll suffice. I don't really care for the 2 volume knobs and the layout, but ya know....it's just the nature of the beast.
I WAS going to immediately throw my spare OFR on but even after searching and before I left, I saw the internet say both studs were m7x0.5mm; they are not both that size. The OFR might be, but the FR Special is bigger and has a very fine thread. So one of these days I'll have to swap the bushings and studs over before I can install my OFR.
So after taping up the fretboard, working the hell out of the tarnished frets with 0000 steel wool along with the fret edges to do what I could for a few kinda sharp fret edges, and cleaning up and detaping, I got to work on restringing it. I had to reset the spring tension and bridge height to get it where I wanted. Then after stretching, tuning, stretching, tuning, rinse and repeat, I was able to get them to stay in tune so I could tweak the truss rod just a little, then retune and start intonating. 3 of the strings were dead on and 1 took just 1 little adjustment while the other 2 took a few, but still not hard to do. Now, 2 hours later, I can FINALLY play on it a little and see how it feels. It's not too bad!
My takeaway: the frets need better polishing and a wee bit of leveling in a spot or two on higher frets on the B and E strings. My friend and I should be able to do that at his shop with ease. The tuning keys are absolute garbage, and the string retainer blows. I'll have to order a better string retainer as the parts guitar the OFR came off of never had one on it. The pickups actually aren't bad, most people say they're actually decent. I don't think I'd be able to do much Zakk Wylde stuff with them but for just playing some good ol' 80s riffs and some lead work, they'll suffice. I don't really care for the 2 volume knobs and the layout, but ya know....it's just the nature of the beast.
