• GEAR EXPO SUMMER 2022: all the latest gear from NAMM and beyond
Those looking for an electric guitar that does pretty much everything except mow the lawn and take the recycling out might want to check out the latest semi-hollows from Schecter.
The Californian guitar company has just unveiled the C-1 E/A Classic in Satin Pelham Blue and Faded Vintage Sunburst finishes, and they have a lot going on with them. Those familiar with Schecter’s C-1 E/A Classic Cat’s Eye model – the one with the beguiling figured maple top – will know what to expect.
These are double-cutaway semi-hollows with dual humbuckers and a Fishman Powerbridge piezo system to allow players to toggle back and forth between sweet acoustic tones and full-fat humbuckers, all on a guitar that’s built to accommodate the six-string showponies of this world.
The C-1 E/A Classics have three-piece mahogany necks, reinforced with carbon fiber rods and whittled into thin C profiles. They have a 25.5” scale, and 14” ebony fingerboards topped with 24 extra-jumbo frets.
Their necks are glued to the body and feature Schecter’s Ultra Access sculpting around the heel, which pretty much excavates all unnecessary bulk timber from the region to open up the full fretboard.
The C-1 E/A Classic in Faded Vintage Sunburst has a arched zebrawood top, mahogany on the back and sides, while the Satin Pelham Blue model is all mahogany. Multi-ply ivory binding finishes them both off nicely.
The hardware looks solid enough – string-through tune-o-matic bridge and tailpiece, Schecter-branded locking tuners with kidney bean buttons – but it’s probably the electrics that we’ll all most interested in.
Traditional, or magnetic, electric guitar pickup voicings come by way of a pair of Schecter USA Pasadena humbuckers. These were first wound for Avenged Sevenfold’s Zacky Vengeance and don’t lack for power. The Pasadena Plus in the bridge is the hotter of the two, with a little more juice in the upper-mids.
These are complemented by a Fishman Powerbridge piezo system, as seen on guitars such guitars such as Jerry Cantrell’s Gibson ‘Wino’ Les Paul Custom, which offers acoustic electric guitar tones at the flick of a switch. But not only that, you can blend both signals so that the magnetic pickups and piezo tones are working together. Very clever.
The control setup is quite simple, however. There are master volume and tone pots for the magnetic pickups, a push/pull function on the tone pot for splitting the coils – again, so very versatile – and volume and tone controls for the piezo sounds.
There’s a three-way pickup selector for the humbuckers and a three-way output selector that, as mentioned above, let’s you select the humbuckers, piezo, or both together. The Powerbridge preamp is powered by a 9V battery that is secreted in an easy-access compartment in the rear of the guitar.
This pickup and piezo setup is where the C-1 E/A Classic offers something genuinely different – if not unique. It positions itself as a natural rival to a guitar such as the PRS SE Hollowbody II Piezo, and maybe even guitars such as Fender’s Acoustasonic models – both the American and Player Plus versions – could be involved in the conversation.
All are hybrid guitars that offer players a wide spectrum of electric and acoustic tones before they have even touched their pedalboard or guitar amp.
The C-1 E/A Classic is available now, priced £1,025 / $1,499. See Schecter for more details.
