Solar Guitars, the metal guitar brand owned and run by YouTuber and guitarist for the Haunted Ola Englund, has made a play for the high-end electric guitar market with the unveiling of its European Master Built Series.
Built in the EU, the series' debut model comes in a super-hot Flame Solar Burst finish and sporting a brand new body shape for the brand, a Type X, which looks a little like a descendent of the Charvel Star or Dean ML series that was popularised by the late Pantera guitarist Dimebag Darrell – only sharper, a lot sharper.
As in keeping with the Solar Guitars house style, the Type X ‘Solarburst’ – codename XF6FRFSB – has a super-pointed six-in-line reverse headstock, and is designed for extreme high-gain scenarios.
As Englund’s catchphrase goes, ‘Will it chug?’ Well, this certainly should. It is constructed from solid African mahogany topped with a book-matched AAA flame maple top, a classy feature for anyone’s money and an luxurious aesthetic that is reprised on the peghead too.
It has an African mahogany neck, a 10”-12” compound radius Richlite fingerboard, with the Solar logo at the 12th fret. There are no other fretmarkers but navigational help is at hand courtesy of Luminlay Superblue 3mm markers along the side of the fingerboard.
Solar has leaned on the strength of the German engineering sector for the hardware. You will do well to throw a Schaller Lockmeister Floyd Rose double-locking vibrato and the M6 locking tuners out of whack.
The pickups are in-house winds, SA56BEU and SA56NEU Solar Modern humbuckers, which are described as “a more modern and aggressive take on” Solar’s Alnico V pickups. These are direct-mounted with brass countersinks, and are are hooked up to a 500k CTS volume pot, a Tesi killswitch, and a Switchcraft three-way toggle switch.
It’s worth stressing the quality of these components because at $3,799 this puppy does not come cheap. You certainly won’t be jumping off the stage with this in hand.
Thankfully, it does come in a custom-moulded hardshell guitar case, and a COA from Mr Englund himself, and if any of your bandmates get too close to that boutique finish, then those sharp cutaways should shoo them off.
For more details, head over to Solar Guitars.
