Meet my early birthday present to myself!

This is the Schecter Omen Extreme-6 FR in See-Thru Black, part of the Diamond series (which means that it is not a custom Schecter guitar.)

(Pictures of myself with guitar, credits to Waifon.)

Bolt-on neck – though this is slightly angled which makes it nice to lean your head on when it is in a gig bag.

Obligatory 12th-fret shot.

So you might ask – why not an Ibanez with a humbucker-single-humbucker (2-1-2) setup? You get 5 positions in that switch.

I get a 3-way switch between 2 humbuckers…

…but multiply those options by 2 since the Tone knob can be pulled up to switch to single-coil mode.

Of course, this means I don’t get a single/humbucker mix like in positions #2 and #4, but I get a single coil sound at the neck, or bridge, or both.

Although I’ve always hankered for a Ibanez Gio SA in butterscotch, I was deeply saddened to find that it had only 22 frets.

Also, Ibanez’s necks tend to feel a bit cold and impersonal to me. Maybe it’s the finishing of the back. The Schecters generally come with thicker necks – not size 0s.

The FR in its name is for Floyd Rose – it has a licensed Floyd Rose Special floating bridge. I picked this for my love of Pantera!

Somehow, the idea of your strings being held by a metal block is a bit eerie.

Tuners. I reckon I could turn those pegs any way I like…

…since the double-locking nuts are already in place. Gotta dig the 1st fret inlay too!

Guitar strap.

Those of you with sharp eyes might notice that the low E string is missing! This was because I tried doing a divebomb, then pulling it up to see how far it would go… and I snapped the low E string! Who would’ve thought?

And so, I learnt how to tune a Floyd Rose and adjust the back spring tension. It wasn’t that hard, though tuning up takes forever! So the low E string you see in other pictures is actually an Ernie Ball 0.042 Slinky.

In retrospect, since the string broke at the bridge, I could actually feed it into the block again. Alas!

When I got it from the shop it was leaning slightly back – here I’ve reduced the spring tension so the bridge is floating parallel to the body. Though it does make for stiffer action.

I bought a set of Ernie Ball .008-.038 Extra Slinkys to replace the strings when they wear out (and D’addario XL’s in .009-.042 – like the ones that came with the guitar). I learnt my lesson when breaking a string on my first night – to stock up!

All pictures with the Sony DSLT-A77 with Sony Carl Zeiss Distagon T* 24mm F2.0 ZA SSM.