Schecter Blackjack Atx C1 Fr Review
STC-Shaped Guitar Schecter Blackjack ATX C-1: 131 images, 2 user review(s) and 1 video. 7 user reviews of C-1 Blackjack ATX FR by Schecter 0 I bought this guitar because I wanted a good, reliable guitar with a Floyd Rose, but with a tight budget. Therefore I was very lucky to buy it.
Find helpful customer reviews and review ratings for Schecter BlackJack ATX C-1 FR Electric Guitar (Aged White Satin) at Amazon.com. Read honest and unbiased product reviews from our users. This new model features 25' scale mahogany neck is set into the arched mahogany body via Schecter's sleek Ultra Access neck joint, which allows for unobstructed upper fret access.
Just as there are many different schools of metal – heavy metal, stoner metal, death metal, thrash, death-thrash, grindcore, gore-grind, industrial metal, black metal, TRUE black metal – there are also many different schools of metal guitar design. Radical shapes and extreme colours compete on the shelves against stripped back, simple but deadly designs. Active or passive pickups, fixed or floating bridge, 22 frets or 24 (don’t even joke about building a metal guitar with only 21 frets. How can you possibly be evil if you can only reach a high C#?). In many ways the C-1 Blackjack ATX FR is almost too classy to be a metal axe, with its carved top and chunky neck profile that are more likely to remind blindfolded players of a Les Paul than a day-glo heavy metal meat-axe. But don’t worry, there are still plenty of badass features in here for shredders and rhythm chuggers alike.
Spec check
This bad boy features a solid mahogany body with a carved top and aged binding, and a 3-piece maple neck with 24 jumbo frets and a rather flat radius. The fretboard is ebony, the grain of which is extremely tight, giving the fretboard a very smooth feel, especially combined with those huge frets. The only inlay on the face of the fretboard is an ‘active’ symbol at the 12th fret, although there are side dots too so you can still find your way around. The neck is glued in, but carved with Schecter’s ‘Ultra Access’ shape, which makes it feel like a neck-through. The back of the neck is painted, which some players will love, and others, not so much. If it bugs you that much, a good tech can scrape it away neatly, but even though I’m a player who likes a good chunk of unfinished maple, I didn’t find the painted neck to be obstructive or distracting at all. The headstock is Schecter’s pointy 3-a-side design, which looks traditional and hard-edged at the same time.
The review model has an original Floyd Rose locking tremolo bridge. There’s also a fixed bridge version available in 6 and 7 string but frankly, as a shameless 7-string noodler and whammy bar abuser, I feel the range is just that little bit empty without a Floyd Rose-loaded 7-string version. There, I said it. Schecter, please don’t send Zacky Vengeance after me to enact his namesake.
Pickups
The pickups are Seymour Duncan Blackout actives, with a volume control for each and, a global tone control. There’s a three-way pickup switch which selects between each humbucker or a combination of both: no split coil settings here, so the Blackjack’s clean tones lean more towards Metallica than Dream Theater. Seymour Duncan describes the Blackouts thusly: “The ‘other’ USA-made active humbuckers use unbalanced inputs in a differential preamp. The problem is, an unbalanced differential preamp is not very effective at cancelling hum. Our engineers figured out how to capture the tone that players want in an active design, but using balanced inputs. The result is 12dB to 14dB less noise, plus more lows, more highs, and more output. Simply put, Blackouts have more tone than other active pickups.”
Sound
The C-1 Blackjack ATX FR plays like a much more traditional guitar than a shredder’s plank thanks to the combination of the arched top and the neck carve, which is deeper and rounder than the majority of guitars oriented towards the speedier side of axemanship. The Blackout pickups are an interesting spin on the expected active metal pickup sound. They’re a little blunter and a bit warmer than you might expect, with more midrange and ‘woodiness’ than traditional actives. You can really hear the personality of the guitar, which isn’t always true with actives. The bridge unit has plenty of articulation and chunk – you’ll hear plenty of crunch and grind, which is especially great for ultra-fast, muted thrash riffage, while legato techniques have a real sense of movement and dynamics as overtones jump out. The neck pickup sounds round and vocal, responding especially well to huge vibrato, and again there’s a very musical pick attack. You know the kind of pick attack that sounds like an integral part of the note, rather than just a percussive bassy thud at its beginning? Well that’s what this baby excels at. Awesome. Both pickups are ideal for metal, but due to the warmer character they can be used for softer styles too. You may turn a few heads showing up at an indie gig to plug the C-1 Blackjack ATX into a small Fender combo for some ambient jangle, but it’ll fit the bill sonically, no problem.
My only niggle is the placement of the controls. The neck pickup volume is closest to the strings, with the bridge volume in the middle and then the tone control. This makes sense from one perspective – after all, it mirrors the placement of the pickups themselves – but practically, the bridge pickup will probably get the most use and it’s difficult to turn it down with the control in the second position. Easy enough to flip around if you know what you’re doing though if it becomes a problem, but I think the vast majority of players would prefer it to be swapped around to begin with.
Conclusion
This is a very powerful, great sounding and playing guitar with killer features and construction. While some guitars lend themselves more to either rhythm or lead playing, the C-1 BlackJack AX seems to cover it all pretty easily. It takes a lot to drag me away from my beloved neon shred axes but this monster could well do it.
[geo-out country=””Australia” note=””]Musician’s Friend shopping links:
Schecter BlackJack ATX C-1 FR Electric Guitar Aged White
Schecter Blackjack C-1 Electric Guitar Black
Seymour Duncan Blackouts Active Humbucker Set
Seymour Duncan Blackouts Active Humbucker Neck
Seymour Duncan Blackouts Active Humbucker Bridge
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Links
Schecter
Seymour Duncan
Although Schecter was initially known for slightly more traditional guitars, they’ve really hit their stride in the past decade-plus as purveyors of fine high-performance axes aimed at the metal market. They still cater to the traditionalists – especially with the new USA Production Series unveiled at NAMM in January), but the SLS Blackjack C-1 FR-S is a great example of how Schecter unifies a whole stack of shred-friendly features that are unashamedly pitched at those who dwell on the dark side.
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The SLS has a mahogany body with your choice of Crimson Red Burst or Satin Black finish. The latter is the model on review here: the finish seems particularly well applie, and nicely offset by multi-ply binding. The neck is made of three-piece maple for enhanced stability, and there are 24 Jumbo frets on the ebony fretboard. The headstock is a bound three-tuner-per-side variant featuring Grover Rotomatic tuners with an 18:1 gear ratio for smoother tuning and a higher degree of backlash elimination. The only inlay on the fretboard face of the Satin Black version is a ‘Hell’s Gate Skull’ which looks pretty bitchen’, and definitely positions this as a metal guitar. Personally I think it’d do fine without it, as on the Crimson Red Burst model which has offset dots instead, but it’s not a deal breaker. The set neck is carved into Schecter’s Ultra Access shape, which mimics a neck-thru instrument, and the profile is the Ultra Thin spec, which is 19mm at the first fret and 20mm at the 12th.
The ‘FR-S’ in the model designation refers to the Floyd Rose tremolo bridge (a Floyd Rose 1000 Series, although a version is also available with a TonePros TOM bridge with through-body stringing) and the Sustainiac driver, an ingenious device which provides infinite sustain and the option of various overtones as well. The Floyd is floating with a back rout, and perfectly set up right out of the box. The bridge pickup is a Seymour Duncan Full Shred, a model which was originally developed with Buddy Blaze and Vivian Campbell for the Kramer Nightswan. Electronics include a master volume, a master tone and a three-way pickup selector toggle switch, as well as on/off and three-way mode switches for the Sustainiac. These modes are Normal – infinite sustain of the original note; Mix Mode, where some frets will yield fundamental notes while others will quickly transition to harmonics; and Harmonic Mode, where sustained notes will morph into a high fifth or seventh harmonic vibration. Let’s stress that this is a physical, rather than artificially generated harmonic, and you can hear it happening even if you turn your amp off. The Sustainer driver actually manipulates the vibration of the string itself to bring about the sustain or harmonic overtone.
The Full Shred is a fat-sounding pickup with rich overtones in the midrange, great for transitioning from thick chording to expressive solo work. Harmonics jump right off the fretboard, and there are some really nice shifting transients when you apply techniques like bending and slides. It’s great for progressive rock or more aggressive metal styles.
When the Sustainiac is used as a pickup instead of a driver, it’s a bit muffled and not necessarily a good match for the Full Shred – it could use a little more clarity and definition – but it becomes a superstar when it’s used in sustain mode (where it keeps itself busy vibrating the string while the bridge pickup handles the sound). The sustain function is addictive whether you leave it in normal mode or explore the various harmonic options, and it makes the guitar feel literally alive – you can feel the whole damn thing vibrating differently with each note you play, and it opens up a world of expressive possibilities whether you’re using a clean or dirty tone, and whether you’re playing single notes or chords. If everyone spent three hours a day playing a guitar with a Sustainiac, there’d be no more wars or sadness. It’s that much fun.
The evil skull inlay might put a few prospective buyers off, but don’t let yourself be one of them – you can always go for the Crimson Red version if you like the specs but not the skull. This is an addictively playable guitar that gears itself toward helping you to play your best, express your innermost feelings and perhaps sear off a few faces. It’d be a crushing axe even without the Sustainiac (and you can indeed buy it with a Seymour Duncan Jazz hum bucker in the neck position instead), but the Sustainiac really kicks it up a notch.
LINK: Schecter