Vrad
Active member
Ok guys so I had this guitar for about a week now and I figured I'd post my thoughts on it after the initial giddiness wore off.
Specs:
Ash wings - Antique Ash finish
Maple 5-pc neck with Black Limba stripes - Tung Oil finish
Zebrawood fretboard
SS frets
Lithium pickups - Duncan Pegasus/Sentient once they're built. I'll explain this in the Ordering Process part
Scale - 27" - 25.5"
Custom Hipshot bridge
Construction: Ok so holy shit is this thing built well. Everything is perfect. I kept looking for something nit-picky to write about, but I can't find anything. The guitar arrived almost in tune. Considering it came from California to New Jersey where the temperature dropped a good 30-40 degrees, that's pretty darn amazing.
The quality of the materials is top notch. The wood is beautiful, highly figured with a cool understated finish. The hardware feels REALLY solid. Only complaint is the volume pot is high friction. I would have preferred low-friction, but it is what it is.
Overall, I'd say this guitar is as good if not better than just about any high-end production guitar I've tried. That includes ESP, Jackson, Suhr, Anderson, EBMM etc.
Playability: This is where shit gets crazy. No joke, this is the best feeling neck I've ever played in 30+ years of playing guitar. I've never played a mult-scale guitar before and I picked it up and played it as if there was no difference whatsoever. The action is incredibly low straight out of the case. In fact I had to add a tiny bit of relief to it because it was too low. It's so slippery to play that I can pull off stuff that on my other guitars was always a fight. Oh yeah. Not a buzz or a errant noise anywhere to be found
Tone: Unplugged, the guitar is as resonant as any great production solid-body electric I've tried. I read someone saying the guitar they received was dead-sounding. It's not dead at all. It's got a typical Swamp Ash snap to it. It rings loud and clear. Nothing dead about it.
Plugged in, the guitar is tight and pleasant sounding. The Lithiums are pretty neutral and flat eq-wise. Not too much of anything. The stock pickups were my biggest concern. Because the guitar is multi-scale, the pickups are off-set and you can't just drop in a set of your favorite pickups and expect it to fit. However, Kiesel does have a relationship with Seymour Duncan and can get Custom Shop Duncans for a very reasonable up-charge of $75 per pick-up. Be warned, this WILL increase your wait time significantly as it did for me. I'll get to this later, but I can say that the Lithiums are a fine pickup and even when I get my Duncans from Kiesel I may not be in any rush to swap them out. They're not right for everyone as no pickup is. They're not some kind of overwound PAF or fire-breathing high output pickup. They're very clear, flat, tight and modern sounding under gain and quite possibly the best clean tones I've heard in a long time.
Ordering Process: The Kiesel rep I worked with was cheerful and polite. Have some idea of what you want prior to calling to order, they're not there to have a brain-storming design session with you. However, they will offer up some options that are not listed as well as some insight into what you're picking. My personal advice is to stick with tried-and-true wood combinations and don't get too fancy. I see a lot of hideously gaudy Kiesels out there that make me think that people are getting overzealous with the term "custom" and the guitar comes in and they realize they made a $3000 mistake.
I've emailed my rep about a 1,000 times with the status of the guitar and most recently the pickups (in fact it's time to bug him again). I have never been ignored or treated badly. However, you do have to bug them as they won't necessarily reach out to you and tell you when things are done. I waited for almost 6 months due to Duncan being "busy" before I finally asked for Lithiums and we worked out a deal where I got a discount because I was waiting so long. But I had to take the initiative. They didn't offer anything up, however they did apologize for the delay and did bug Duncan weekly on the order.
Anyway... Great guitar. Lots of great options. I think I'll order a DC7M or Aries 7 multi scale at some point.
Specs:
Ash wings - Antique Ash finish
Maple 5-pc neck with Black Limba stripes - Tung Oil finish
Zebrawood fretboard
SS frets
Lithium pickups - Duncan Pegasus/Sentient once they're built. I'll explain this in the Ordering Process part
Scale - 27" - 25.5"
Custom Hipshot bridge
Construction: Ok so holy shit is this thing built well. Everything is perfect. I kept looking for something nit-picky to write about, but I can't find anything. The guitar arrived almost in tune. Considering it came from California to New Jersey where the temperature dropped a good 30-40 degrees, that's pretty darn amazing.
The quality of the materials is top notch. The wood is beautiful, highly figured with a cool understated finish. The hardware feels REALLY solid. Only complaint is the volume pot is high friction. I would have preferred low-friction, but it is what it is.
Overall, I'd say this guitar is as good if not better than just about any high-end production guitar I've tried. That includes ESP, Jackson, Suhr, Anderson, EBMM etc.
Playability: This is where shit gets crazy. No joke, this is the best feeling neck I've ever played in 30+ years of playing guitar. I've never played a mult-scale guitar before and I picked it up and played it as if there was no difference whatsoever. The action is incredibly low straight out of the case. In fact I had to add a tiny bit of relief to it because it was too low. It's so slippery to play that I can pull off stuff that on my other guitars was always a fight. Oh yeah. Not a buzz or a errant noise anywhere to be found
Tone: Unplugged, the guitar is as resonant as any great production solid-body electric I've tried. I read someone saying the guitar they received was dead-sounding. It's not dead at all. It's got a typical Swamp Ash snap to it. It rings loud and clear. Nothing dead about it.
Plugged in, the guitar is tight and pleasant sounding. The Lithiums are pretty neutral and flat eq-wise. Not too much of anything. The stock pickups were my biggest concern. Because the guitar is multi-scale, the pickups are off-set and you can't just drop in a set of your favorite pickups and expect it to fit. However, Kiesel does have a relationship with Seymour Duncan and can get Custom Shop Duncans for a very reasonable up-charge of $75 per pick-up. Be warned, this WILL increase your wait time significantly as it did for me. I'll get to this later, but I can say that the Lithiums are a fine pickup and even when I get my Duncans from Kiesel I may not be in any rush to swap them out. They're not right for everyone as no pickup is. They're not some kind of overwound PAF or fire-breathing high output pickup. They're very clear, flat, tight and modern sounding under gain and quite possibly the best clean tones I've heard in a long time.
Ordering Process: The Kiesel rep I worked with was cheerful and polite. Have some idea of what you want prior to calling to order, they're not there to have a brain-storming design session with you. However, they will offer up some options that are not listed as well as some insight into what you're picking. My personal advice is to stick with tried-and-true wood combinations and don't get too fancy. I see a lot of hideously gaudy Kiesels out there that make me think that people are getting overzealous with the term "custom" and the guitar comes in and they realize they made a $3000 mistake.
I've emailed my rep about a 1,000 times with the status of the guitar and most recently the pickups (in fact it's time to bug him again). I have never been ignored or treated badly. However, you do have to bug them as they won't necessarily reach out to you and tell you when things are done. I waited for almost 6 months due to Duncan being "busy" before I finally asked for Lithiums and we worked out a deal where I got a discount because I was waiting so long. But I had to take the initiative. They didn't offer anything up, however they did apologize for the delay and did bug Duncan weekly on the order.
Anyway... Great guitar. Lots of great options. I think I'll order a DC7M or Aries 7 multi scale at some point.
My customer service experience back in 2013 when I ordered it was 100x better than this past build experience.
