This is yet another of my summer 2003
purchases. I only had this one for a couple of months, as it was
sold to fund the DC127. I bought this on in the hopes that it would
be "close enough" to my old AE185. Turns out it was a totally different
animal - in a good way, but not as versatile as I had wanted. By
that, I mean it didn't have a piezo bridge, which is something that I'll
never go without again. However, this guitar had an amazing range
of electric tones. This guitar had a mahogany body and neck, with
the flamed maple top. That in itself gave the guitar a VERY Les Paul-ish
tone when in humbucker mode. I borrowed a friends PRS Custom 22 a
few weeks ago, and the bridge position of both instruments were very similar
sounding. The shocking thing about this guitar was how good the coil
tapping worked. It had the M22N and M22T pickups, and when coil tapped,
you would swear you were hearing a strat - same snap and twang. The
neck pickup tapped with a little grit on it had an unbelievable blues tone.
Overall, though, the tone seemed a little bright for me. Of course,
with the active electronics, that could be compensated for. In fact,
if you wanted a mellow jazz tone, pulling the treble back and using the
neck pickup sounded great. This one had a gloss finished neck, which
was another one of those downfalls for me. While I wished I could
have kept this one, I love its replacement - the DC127 - so much, I can
definitely live without this one. One thing this guitar taught me
- Straploks are good! This was the first guitar I had with Straploks,
and I won't go without them again. I never really had problems with
dropping guitars, but the Straploks are so convenient, and the added security
- how can you lose. One other thing to note about this guitar - it
was (and I believe still is) the guitar displayed on the DC200 page on
the Carvin site. I think it's also shown in the "Jamroom".
I didn't realize that until after I bought it, but interesting trivia,
anyway.
