I’m submitting another #1, because technically, I have a #1 for each style I’m writing in.
I totally echo this.
#1 for playing faster, Ghost Shadows stuff:
2019 Solar A2.6S. It's light, fast and just makes me want to keep playing. I swapped the Duncan Solar pickups in this for a set of
Elysian Trident IIs that Adam made for me - think of a Super Distortion with more balls/crispness and you have a Trident II.
I also have a 2022 Solar A2.6 in candy apple red that still has the Duncan Solars in it and these two mix together very, very well when recording. If this was Highlander, this might be the winner... maybe.
#1 for my 2nd (3rd) band 2x4:
2010 BC Rich Blood Bound Warbeast. Apparently you couldn't buy this outside of the Far East and I'd never seen one til I stumbled onto the Tokyo listing on eBay. 2x4 is specifically playing down tuned, slower, doom-ey stuff - for whatever reason when we started 2x4 we decided to use BC Rich guitars so, I have this one and a
BC Rich Revenge that's been heavily customized (custom crackle paint job, all black hardware, Duncan Nazgul bridge pup and locking tuners). But, this one blows it away. It's very thin (think Ibanez Sabre) but feels super solid, very light, very comfortable to play standing up or sitting down. Neck is silky smooth, frets are nearly perfect. It has the Duncan Solars I pulled from the A2.6S above in it and they sound great - very Duncan Custom-ish.
#1 for I'm never getting rid of this again:
1994 Ibanez RG470. I bought this brand new within minutes of it arriving and being unboxed at Veneman's music in Rockville Maryland back when I was the guitar player/singer/songwriter for SCAB. The Lo TRS trem it came with totally sucked, but the guitar was very sweet. Back in the 90s when I was still gigging fairly frequently, it was my go to stage guitar.
I played a dozen or so gigs with it, recorded a few demos, had piles of band practices and just loved it like a part of my family. But, I knew it wasn't a great guitar. After I left MD, it spent quite awhile in the case while I sobered up and got on with life. Then, once I got married, I broke it back out and decided to play it some more.
Around 2005, I got it set up by a guy who runs a shop in Phoenix, and he was allegedly EVH's old guitar tech from the 90s era VH tours. After he set it up, it punched way above its weight class, but still wasn't great.
In 2016, I'd just bought my 1991 540SLTD and it is such a better guitar that when we ran into some cashflow troubles and I knew I had to sell something, the 470 became a
pay the bills casualty.
Was chatting with a buddy who is a luthier/custom guitar builder and all around excessively talented dude earlier this year and he said "man, that would be so cool if you could get that guitar back - I would totally set that thing up for you and bet it would play better than ever before". That got my wheels turning and I reached out to the guy who bought it from me. It took some wheeling and dealing, in which I found an almost identical guitar for him and paid him a little cash, and about a month later I had it back.
SO.MANY.MEMORIES with this one. I yanked that Lo-TRS and swapped in a 1996T. The stock tuners were junk, so I installed a set of Hipshot lockers. Then replaced the INF pups with Duncan Distortions and handed it over to my buddy. He had it for about a week, rolled the fretboard, fret ends, filed down the 1996T base plate to it fit the route better, then did all the usual polish/condition, etc stuff and it plays better than anything you can buy new these days shy of an Ibanez Prestige . Blown away I was able to get it back - and if I wasn't going to be cremated, I'd want it in my coffin when I die...
