noob_pwn
New member
I've been waiting a very long time for these 2 guitars to arrive and it was more than worth the wait.
I've had the spalted about 3 weeks now but i was holding off shooting pics until they both arrived. Unfortunately due to my picking technique a bit of the camo has worn off the bridge pickup as you can see.
I was extremely lucky with the charcoal one, it arrived when i should have been on tour, but most of our dates for january got canned because of extremely bad flooding in the top half of the country.
When i got the spalted one i pulled it out of the box and it was perfectly in tune, even though it had been beaten around by fedex over the pacific for a week. I played about 5 shows with it in the space of a week and a half and it didn't fall more than about 2-cents out of tune.
I don't know where to start on bernie's work, these are by far the best guitars I've ever played, and I've owned quite a few high end axes. They totally blow all the J-customs i used to own out of the water.
They sound extremely lively and balanced, the neck profiles are perfect, they resonate for days and have this ridiculous low-end piano like clarity through chords (i play in Ab & Bb).
They are finished in an amazing gloss coat that looks like glass over the wood, i've never seen anything quite like it. The necks however have an oiled finish which makes them ridiculously fast to play on and the feel doesn't change at all when my hands get sweaty playing live which has actually made a huge difference for me.
The best thing about these two is the setup and fretwork, i didn't actually think guitars could ever play this good, the action is stupidly low but at the same time does not buzz at all. I've had some PLEK setups done in the past and they didn't come close to this. The SS frets are a dream to play on.
The attention to detail on these is immaculate, its really hard to pick up the accurate colour of the charcoal one in pics but i did my best, it looks purple in the sunlight. The birdseye fretboard on the charcoal one is incredible and the spalt on the spalted one is breathtaking. You may not be able to see it in the photo but it actually has a flame figure running underneath it which just looks phenomenal. The burnt chrome pickups on the charcoal jekyll seem to complement the inlays really well and set the guitar off, they almost look a nickel colour in low-light but with light on them you can see every colour of the rainbow in a vivid swirl.
Overall i couldn't be happier, these guitars have exceeded my expectations greatly, i didn't know it was possible for a guitar to be this good, let alone made to my specs down to the finest detail by a great dude with the most personal service I've ever experienced. If you're thinking of ordering a rico, don't waste time contemplating it, just get one.
the top two pics were taken at bernie's shop, also you might notice a black LP 3-way in the spalted guitar instead of a 12-pole dimarzio switch (this was a small mistake but bernie sent me a 12-pole straight away to swap into it, haven't gotten around to it yet). You may also notice the unique trem cavity cover we came up with, it gives access to both tension screws & tremol-no, also my controls are slightly recessed so the switch nuts are flush with the body and my output jacks are angled and recessed.
Also, thanks to the axe palace for commissioning these, jamie from epic guitars (australian rico/DAR amps distro) for helping with shipping and bernie himself for being an awesome dude and building me the guitars of my dreams.
Common specs:
Maple neckthru
Mahogany wings
25.5" Scale
24 Stainless steel 6100 frets
43mm nut width
17" fretboard radius
19.5-21.5mm neck thickness
Original Floyd Rose Tremolo
Grover Tuners
Bareknuckle Ceramic Warpig pickups
3-way selector with centre position inner coils of both pickups, volume, 2-way toggle killswitch.
Recessed electronics
Tremol-no
Dunlop Flushmount Straploks
Custom tremolo cavity plates
Abalone Logo
Black hardware
Gloss finish
Satin finish on back of neck
Jekyll #1:
Spalted maple top & matching headstock
Ebony Fretboard
Rico Diamond Abalone inlays
camo pickup covers
Jekyll #2:
Flamed maple top & matching headstock
Charcoal stain finish on top & headstock
Charcoal stain masked at top's edge for "natural binding"
Birdseye maple fretboard
Offset Abalone dot inlays
burnt chrome pickup covers
I've had the spalted about 3 weeks now but i was holding off shooting pics until they both arrived. Unfortunately due to my picking technique a bit of the camo has worn off the bridge pickup as you can see.
I was extremely lucky with the charcoal one, it arrived when i should have been on tour, but most of our dates for january got canned because of extremely bad flooding in the top half of the country.
When i got the spalted one i pulled it out of the box and it was perfectly in tune, even though it had been beaten around by fedex over the pacific for a week. I played about 5 shows with it in the space of a week and a half and it didn't fall more than about 2-cents out of tune.
I don't know where to start on bernie's work, these are by far the best guitars I've ever played, and I've owned quite a few high end axes. They totally blow all the J-customs i used to own out of the water.
They sound extremely lively and balanced, the neck profiles are perfect, they resonate for days and have this ridiculous low-end piano like clarity through chords (i play in Ab & Bb).
They are finished in an amazing gloss coat that looks like glass over the wood, i've never seen anything quite like it. The necks however have an oiled finish which makes them ridiculously fast to play on and the feel doesn't change at all when my hands get sweaty playing live which has actually made a huge difference for me.
The best thing about these two is the setup and fretwork, i didn't actually think guitars could ever play this good, the action is stupidly low but at the same time does not buzz at all. I've had some PLEK setups done in the past and they didn't come close to this. The SS frets are a dream to play on.
The attention to detail on these is immaculate, its really hard to pick up the accurate colour of the charcoal one in pics but i did my best, it looks purple in the sunlight. The birdseye fretboard on the charcoal one is incredible and the spalt on the spalted one is breathtaking. You may not be able to see it in the photo but it actually has a flame figure running underneath it which just looks phenomenal. The burnt chrome pickups on the charcoal jekyll seem to complement the inlays really well and set the guitar off, they almost look a nickel colour in low-light but with light on them you can see every colour of the rainbow in a vivid swirl.
Overall i couldn't be happier, these guitars have exceeded my expectations greatly, i didn't know it was possible for a guitar to be this good, let alone made to my specs down to the finest detail by a great dude with the most personal service I've ever experienced. If you're thinking of ordering a rico, don't waste time contemplating it, just get one.
the top two pics were taken at bernie's shop, also you might notice a black LP 3-way in the spalted guitar instead of a 12-pole dimarzio switch (this was a small mistake but bernie sent me a 12-pole straight away to swap into it, haven't gotten around to it yet). You may also notice the unique trem cavity cover we came up with, it gives access to both tension screws & tremol-no, also my controls are slightly recessed so the switch nuts are flush with the body and my output jacks are angled and recessed.
Also, thanks to the axe palace for commissioning these, jamie from epic guitars (australian rico/DAR amps distro) for helping with shipping and bernie himself for being an awesome dude and building me the guitars of my dreams.
Common specs:
Maple neckthru
Mahogany wings
25.5" Scale
24 Stainless steel 6100 frets
43mm nut width
17" fretboard radius
19.5-21.5mm neck thickness
Original Floyd Rose Tremolo
Grover Tuners
Bareknuckle Ceramic Warpig pickups
3-way selector with centre position inner coils of both pickups, volume, 2-way toggle killswitch.
Recessed electronics
Tremol-no
Dunlop Flushmount Straploks
Custom tremolo cavity plates
Abalone Logo
Black hardware
Gloss finish
Satin finish on back of neck
Jekyll #1:
Spalted maple top & matching headstock
Ebony Fretboard
Rico Diamond Abalone inlays
camo pickup covers
Jekyll #2:
Flamed maple top & matching headstock
Charcoal stain finish on top & headstock
Charcoal stain masked at top's edge for "natural binding"
Birdseye maple fretboard
Offset Abalone dot inlays
burnt chrome pickup covers
