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This is my favorite guitar. The design is patented and it won the 1992 BEST DESIGN award. The most interesting feature is the cut-away seen at the base of the neck, where the body seems to be 'scooped' out. You can actually bow the strings through the body with a thin stick. (Watch yourself!) It sounds like a possessed violin. Or, your audience could actually see your teeth when you "eat the strings" like Jimmy Hendrix. The cut out feature is more than cosmetic. With all stringed instruments, the sound comes from the fretboard and is amplified by the body of the instrument. With solid body guitars, the body doesn't amplify the sound, but it affects the sound in different ways, i.e. sustain, and timbre. The cutout allows the neck and body to vibrate in the proper phase to allow greater sustain. And the dense maple body makes the sound full. String harmonics are a breeze and sustain forever when you wiggle the strings. The Floyd Rose whammy and locking nut are the best I've ever played with. It's not as good as a trans-trem, but I never had to tune the thing. The pickups on this guitar are excellent also. They are custom wound to have extra gain. In fact, they will overdrive an amp and produce a distorted sound even with a clean amp setting. Very nice. A Sad Story...My sad story goes like this. I used to own one of these fine instruments, but I noticed that its detail couldn't be seen well on a dark stage, so I resolved to get a RED one. It just so happens that I had been eyeing one at a local store for several months. So, I sold my black one to Dr. Ken Blundell (my CS advisor), and went to the store the next day to get the red one. To my horror, the red one had been sold the day before to some 15 year-old kid.
I cried--and learned my lesson about reserving merchandise... If anyone knows where I can get one in great condition for about 350 bucks, I'll pay cash... I'm lucky that I have several other guitars to play with, but none sound as good, or have the 'soul' the Scoop had. Every so often Blundell lets me baby-sit it...
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