Schwab Review (Personal

[bjc]

I received my 5-string Schwab from Kevin in August. I wanted to wait to give my impressions until I had a chance to play her in a variety of settings before posting.

Looks: First of all it's a beautiful axe. I'll see if I can post some pictures. She played very nice out of the box. I normally like my action stupid insanely low, but this was low enough and extremely playable. The spacing is really comfortable. I have another 5 string by a name maker where the strings are too close and it's not easy to get my fingers out of the way…and I have small hands!

Sound: I had Kevin install "splitters" in both pick ups. One tone is bright similar to a single coil and the other is a standard humbucker. So there is a wide variety of tone…some of the tones I’ve found to be more useful than others…but it’s nice to be able to make radical tone modifications on the fly. I played it through my Fender Dynatouch amp first…clean, with all those options, I could go from super Roy Buchanan bright to nice fat warm jazz tones. I really feel like there’s not a tone that I’d want that I can’t find here. Honestly, remember I’m not basking in the afterglow of having just received a new piece of gear. When I played her dirty (and I play over-the-top hard rock/metal dirty) all I can say is Wow! In the neck position it’s a nice fat tone when you use the humbucker setting…the “split” position is thinner, but similar to the neck position in a Strat. The middle position(s) churned out some useful tones and the bridge position cut like a knife. When I played along with some jam CDs I found most all of the tones worthy of use.

I also played her through my Vox Valvetronix amp…with similar results. I think I like my Fender better for this axe, however. Still the clean sound with the Vox’s chorus produced some really glassy tones.

On The Job: The first place she got used was at an outdoor gig with my cover band. It was not my intention to use her. She was there as an emergency back-up. This was a festival and due to the short set up time, I wasn’t able to run my acoustic mandolin (Freshwater) quickly enough. So for our 3-4 mandolin songs I used the Schwab…the clean sound was nice…I wish I had turned it up more…but I didn’t want to screw up the sound guys. But she played nice and clean, I wouldn’t use this in place of an acoustic, but she worked in a pinch.

After that I brought her out to my original band’s show…there she really shined. We do songs that go from clean to distorted and while she sounded similar, but warmer than the other mandolin I had used, she played much better. The acoustic guitarist commented on how nice my new tone blended in and many of the people at the show commented on my solos…probably because I felt like I could take more “chances” improvising due to how comfortable the Schwab plays.

I’ve been using her ever since with great results.

Criticisms: The only “problems” I have are 1) it is quieter than my guitars, so I have to remember to turn the amp up when I play her…If I had a separate amp, it’d be fine. And 2) It has taken me a while to get used to the string gauge. Kevin put a 22 on for the D string, which to me feels thin, but bends real nice and stays intone. I’m used to a 24-26, but I know if I had specified the gauges to Kevin he would have worked with me.

The Order Process: Kevin was easy to work with. The mandolin arrived with no delays…right on time. For the price I got myself a top notch piece of gear.

Highly recommended!

[Larry S Sherman]

I would LOOOOOVE to see pictures!

Larry

[bjc]

Here's a couple of views...I'll get some close ups this weekend

[Larry S Sherman]

Great lookin' axe!

Semi-related question: How do you like the Vox amp? I don't have an amp for my emando, and there's a used one near me that I'm considering. It's just for playing at home, so it doesn't have to be loud.

Otherwise I might order a Epiphone Valve Junior.

Larry

[mando.player]

The Valve Jr. is a nice amp. One thing to look out for is that some of them tend to be a bit noisy. There is also no master volume, so in order to get any thing beyond clean you have to get loud. It's a very loud amp.

There are other tube amps in this price range. The little Fender Champion 600 is pretty cool. It's the opposite of the Valve Jr. The top volume is not that loud and the clean tones are very quiet.

I ended up getting a Peavey Valve King Royal 8. It does have a master volume on it, which allows you to better control the tone/volume ratio. For the money, it's a pretty decent amp.