Schecter Retro C-1 E/A Cat's Eye

The best value for the buck overall

I was choosing my first electric guitar a few of months ago and I'd encountered this beauty here. It was the cheapest option with H+H+Piezo pickups. I wanted just one guitar with all those sound options as I didn't want to collect them all. :)

It sounds great and clean when connected directly to the external soundcard (Scarlett 2i2) but my Marshall MG50FX always adds its own creaky and rattling tones whatever mode you choose.

The small drawbacks that I've found are:

- The strings were set extremely low making it very easy to play, but there was some rattling in the middle.

- Even though the strings were sitting low, the piezo bridge was already set pretty high so there was little (but enough) room for raising it further.

- The string stopper (not sure what you call it, I'm not a native speaker) was also pretty high, but still the strings between the 2 bridges were in contact with the sharp edge of the piezo pickup body. This is not very good as strings may wear out quickly. After some adjustments, the 2 thicker strings are still stretched across that edge.

- The individual piezo pickups on the Tune-o-Matic bridge were not tuned perfectly so that correctly tuned open strings were not in perfect tune on the 12th fret. But that's OK, you would tune them again for every new set of string anyway.

- The piezo pickup sounded noticeably softer than the magnetic pickups that are about twice as loud as piezo. According to Fishman's brochure (included), this can be remedied by adjusting the small rotary trim pot near the chip. I did fix this pretty easily and now all the pickups are about equally loud.

Yes, Schecter confirms they do not tune their guitars in this price range, it's not a custom guitar. The neck anchor was set correctly though, bending it slightly did not help get rid of that rattling. Anyway, I had to watch a few videos about tuning a guitar and have it now set up so that it sounds equally well along the entire neck and strings do not rattle anymore. Luckily, they've put 3 hex keys in the package for every adjustment you would ever need.

But those are minor issues, you would expect those from any guitar in this price range. In general, it's a very pleasant instrument with looks of a rock-star. Definitely recommend it as the first and only electric guitar. The competitors I found were the PRS Hollow Piezo and one model by Fame, but they cost significantly more, around EUR1200-1500. But they bear more famous pickups.

In general, it's a perfect buy for the money, I'm happy.