Ok, well after drooling over this guitar ever since I saw it @ http://www.kxkguitars.com/warriorv.html I have finally decided to break the bank and order one. I just wanted a few general opinions before I make a few decisions first.

How does a Cocobolo fretboard compare to Ebony and Rosewood in terms of quality and tone?

What pickup would you choose to place in this guitar for Distorted Brutal Death Metal...cleans are unimportant as I have another guitar thats perfect for that already(It's Mahogany and only has a bridge position)?

How badass is that headstock?

Ok, the last one was just for fun... but I'd really respect anyones opinion on this. Thanks in advance.

cocobolo is more inbetween rosewood and ebony, is very grainy and pretty lookin. Rosewood is cheap as shit, flexible (allows warping) and very warm toned, also has a pretty open grain so it wears out your fingers somewhat. It is priced according to COSMETICS, not tone.
Ebony as hard as rock, super smooth, can come in pretty grains or straightforward black, and is very bright sounding like maple. It prevents neck warping somewhat due to its stiffness, and is fast to play on. Good thing about it is if you add it to a mahogany guitar, it will give you some top end to clear out the mud.

For pickup, you could do a seymour duncan invader (its what nile uses), but i would only recommend this if you get an ebony fretboard. The pickup is muddy enough as it is, but if keep it WITHOUT a volume knob, none of the trebel will be bled off, so it will be clearer than in my personal experience.
A super clear sterile metal pickup would be the X2N, which lets your guitar do all the speaking for itself, but i would HIGHLY recommend getting a volume knob for that, or it will be too overpowering.
(for those of you who dont know, even when a volume knob is set to "on" 100%, it still bleeds off trebel depending on its rating, 250k bleeds more than 500k.)
other options are a SD dimebucker (ew), or some bareknuckle nailbombs or warpigs... see other people's suggestions for metal pickups.
Stay away from EMG's with this guitar, you probably want to hear the tonewood if you're guna dump this much money for it.

and i dont like the headstock because it will get damaged SO easily its not even funny.


Edit: added
i'm jealous you're getting such a sweet gitter hahahah.

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Heh... thanks for taking the time to post such a long response. I'm gonna have to research the pickup selection but you pretty much made up my mind on the fretboard being Ebony.

As for the headstock damaging easily...I would be so pissed if it were but in my guitar playing experience, I have yet to so much as scratch a single guitar and NOBODY will be allowed to touch it
.

Wow, if you are droppin that much money on a guitar, you HAVE to throw a Bareknuckle Warpig in there. A Warpig in that guitar would make satan cry.

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does a warpig have ANY highs? i heard they were so overwound that its just screaming lows and mids.

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Read its description: "Seymour Duncan Invader bridge pickup" (it comes with an Invader)

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It's a custom shop model and I've already talked to the guy. He told me he'll put whatever I want in it before shipping.

+1 on checking out bare knuckle. Have a look round their website: http://www.bareknucklepickups.co.uk/ as they have a number of pickups that would be suitable for metal. Personally from what I've read the Warpig is similar to an EMG81 except it is much more sensitive to picking dynamics and allows the tone of the wood to come through. You can specify a Ceramic Warpig at no extra cost. There are a few threads on their own forum dedicated to a similar question about Death metal and the Warpig.

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if this is a strict metal guitar, for sure go for a ceramic pickup. They have higher gain at the cost of being unable to clean up, but hey, you said you didnt need cleans.

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no offence to the poster cause i know its all about preference and opinion but im i the only one that thinks this guitar is retarded?

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People have different tastes.

Rosewood is not cheap and flimsy btw, if you've only played lowend guitars with rosewood boards then of course you're gonna have that impression. Have you ever seen Brazilian rosewood? It shits all over all the rosewood fretboards you'll find in any sub-1000$ guitar in a store. My Ibanez Universe UV7BK's rosewood board is nothing short of amazing, and it's a 17 year old guitar(mine was made in 1990, first year of production!)

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Dude, note how i said it was priced on COSMETICS. It is soft and flimsy compared to ebony thouhg, you can never deny that: rosewood has big open grains (thus warm sound) and ebony has a very tight grain (bright sound). If you look at their stats, you'll notic that ebony can withstand more pressure and stronger sudden hits (like if you hit it with a hammer). The reason rosewood is so highly used is because you can hammer frets right in with a fretting machine, and the rosewood will flex without cracking (unlike ebony, which requires hand fretting).
Brazilian rosewood is the most figured rosewood, and is attained from trees that grow along the coast of brazil that die and rot a bit thus getting the highly figured grain. Ontop of this, the Brazillian governemnt has claimed that the trees are being cut down with the rainforest (which theyre not because theyre a coastal tree) which elevates the cost even more. These factors of beauty and rarity, plus the fact theres so much hype attributes to its price.

Brazillian is absolutely fuckin beautiful though, definately kicks the ass of any fingerboard, my guitar teacher has an old gibson melody maker with it and its sooo pretty. Cocobolo could be a substitute if you want a pretty fingerboard... but i'm more of a fan of straightforward black ebony under shiny steel frets, and it also clears the mud out of mahogany. Mahog neck/body with any rosewood fingerboard would be mud heaven. =/

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+ the fretboard doesn't have much to add to the neck stability due to the orientation of the grain me thinks.

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My PRS has a Brazilian board, fucking beautiful. Brazilian rosewood is actually much closer to ebony, its heavy and fairly tight grained.

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Thanks a lot for all of the input guys. Still working on choosing the perfect pickup. Just out of curiosity though, why would an EMG 81 be a bad choice?

The head looks fucking ridiculous and 1 pickup (though I doubt it matters because I rarely use more than the bridge), but otherwise I don't really see much bad about it.

I'd rather call Karl Sanders retarded, I mean just listen to his "solos" (extra notice to sacrifice unto sebek which just makes me laugh so much when someone plays it).

I happen to think the headstock is genius and I never use my neck pickup for death metal.

Lastly, Karl Sanders is an amazing guitarist. Maybe he just isn't your style.

I'd like to see you pull off that sweep in Sacrifice. Or any Nile solo for that matter.

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The Ceramic warpig is supposed to be godly, and not too dark or muddy in any way. Of course the tone is dark but the highs are really clear and cutting, it's very tight and punchy and stuff too, and it does a kickass jazzy clean i hear(ask for "Hi i am a french jazz player, what pickup for me" on their forum, you'll be surprised at the answer )

Else there's APC pickups which are supposed to kill everything, I am getting a set by the beginning of next month to test (One Persuader Lead Custom for bridge, one Felony X for neck). My impression so far with APC is really great, you can talk to these guys for hours about nothing if you want to, feels like talking to some family member you don't see too often rather than a buisness company. BTW, Mel, the holder, invented the Fender Lace Sensors, which kicks ass (this idea was stolen from him). These are not "i want in on this too" guys, they're doing things their own way.

The thing that always annoys me about pickup sound clips is this setup: 3000$ Guitar -> 200$ pickup -> 200$ Cable -> Behringer V-Amp pro.. i mean, what the fuck? Good pickups need a great tube amp, not a shitty amp modeler designed to neutralize the tone of your pickups.

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EMG's are active pickups. This means you have a pickup with WAY less coils than a regular pickup, and a weaker magnet, which give it a very weak field, and super quiet volume, so they put a preamp right after the coils to increase the volume. The result is a pickup that can only barely detect the vibration of the string, and cant really detect the tone of the wood. So basically, all the pickup hears is the string, and not all the tonewood you put into the guitar. Get a passive so it can hear the tonewood.

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Ok thanks. That seems to make sense, seeing as how emgs come stock in all of the low quality LTDs. I'm leaning toward the Ceramic Warpig right now. I heard a few sound clips and they sound amazing... but unfortunately they are almost all in standard tuning. No death metal.

True...true... I wonder why the most high end Esp have EMG? I mean, mahogny body and maple top would be pretty sweet sounding with a passive in there, right? So why put an active there?

Anyway, children of decadence, listen to this guy, he's right in my opinion.

2 reasons
Hype: emg's exploded in popularity with main famous players using them (metallica, slayer, cannibal corpse, behemoth, zakk wylde among others), and all of the random faux-metalcore bands coming out with them (protest the hero, as i lay dying, and all of them). "my fav band uses these pickups so if i buy a guitar with them i will sound just like them!"... The pickups sell the guitars for ESP

Sponsorship and capitalization: I dont know who, but between EMG and ESP, one of them pays the other to use their product because they KNOW that their product will help the other person sell.
EMG could pay ESP to add hype to the pickup "this good (not) company uses emgs, so they MUST be good!"
or alternatively
ESP could pay EMG to use their products, using again, "my fav band uses these pickups so if i buy a guitar with them i will sound just like them!"...

You will also notice that the EMG models are more expensive than the duncan models. This is to get the buyer to believe that EMG's are better. They arent. Its all hype.

edit: added:
people are guna rail on me because emgs are effected by tone wood, but its SO insignificant compared to passives. The tone wont be "mahogany tone with, duncans in it" the tone will be "EMG TONE!!!!.... plus a little mahogany in there"

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I would remove CC and Behemoth from there, as Behemoth have never used EMG's until extremely recently with all their ESP endorsements, and neither CC or Behemoth are "famous" enough to make them popular pickups.

EMG's exploded in popularity in the early 90's with Obituary, they were one of the major endorsers the had back then, apart form Slayer/Metallica/Anthrax/etc..

And it indeed makes every guitar sound alike. Why would you spend 3000$+ on a guitar with an EMG pickup that's going to sound exactly like a 400$ guitar with one? I don't think a fancy finish and fretjob should cost that much. Take advantage of the tonality and sustain of your guitar's wood.

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I can't for these reasons

1. I don't have a floyd rose guitar.
2. one year is not enough to sweep (atleast for me).
3. I don't want to.

And lack of any kind of melody as well in the solos is pretty gay.
But yes, he is a good guitarist, and I like Nile. but the solos are fucking dumb imo, sounds like random bullshit except when they both harmonize some scales.

The guitar looks cool, if someone gave me one I'd play it for ages but I wouldn't buy it myself for many reasons as I can't afford it and I'd rather have an own custom guitar. The head might be a temporary dislike, I just find it hilarious.

floyds are overrated, if you're (really fucking) good at bending, you dont need one.
and the Sacrifice unto Sebek solo is pretty sad compared to their others... a good nile solo is in the song Blessed Dead, which I believe is played on a Dean V, without tremolo. It sounds like tremolo because Karl is amazing at bending and vibrato.

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If you only have a year of experience then you dont have a justified reason to say ANY professional lead guitarist isnt as good as everyone in the fucking world says he is. And "I dont want to" is never a good response, all it says is "Im really fucking ignorant, and I think Im a god because I can get through smoke on the water nearly flawlessly"
change your attitude.

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How about you read this and kill yourself



And that last quote of yours is pretty fucking stupid, because then you could compare a crappy guitar player to Nile, because I can play Nile.

and if I don't want to learn his solo because they don't contain melody (though I can not say that as a global thing, as I haven't listened to all of Nile because most of it is just fucking boring). And motivation is without a doubt the biggest factor for wanting to learn something, if you don't want to you're not going to do it (except if you're forced)



The floyd rose part was for Sacrifice Unto Sebek, as quoted.

And as previously stated

you must hate kerry king huh virus?

re the pickup ... with a V, will you really get good tone anyways regardless of wood/craftsmanship? doesn't the shape compromise the sound to some degree?

WTF? Where did you read that? Well it probably will, sound = vibration, and the V-shape will proably vibrate diffrently than a strat shape, the V shape will probably cancel out a lot of vibrations so you get more raw string->pickup tone.. This is just a wild guess.

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simmer down, scrubb

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And a big part of the musical business is playing stuff that you really dont care to play. You cant always pick and choose what you want to be "motivated" on. And you can NEVER take the attitude of "I'm being forced to do this". You do it with a smile on your face or they can your ass. Im not suggesting that you learn stuff that you dont want to on your own time, but In LIFE you have to do this kind of shit all the time.

to get back on topic, Go with the dunc's theyre a great product and produce amazing tone.

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no it wont. That only really applies to accoustics because they need a certain shape for the soundwaves to bounce evenly throughout the guitar.


And about the pickups... You will be MUCH more satisfied with a bareknuckle than with a duncan. Don't get me wrong, i love duncans, but a custom bareknuckle will be WAY more responsive and organic, and give you a super unique tone. It will feel like the notes jump out of the guitar. And another thing, bareknuckles have more output than duncans could ever wish to have, perfect for death metal.

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Yeah because you can't go through life without playing shitty solos

No offense but you're what 16 years old? Although i commend your attempt at understanding the real world, its not quite as you state it. Especially music wise. Maybe pop music, but as a person that listens to death metal (you) i would imagine you would have an entirely different tone as it relates to playing what you want and not what other people tell you to do.

There are concequences for nearly every action and theres not really a "you can never" type of statement as it relates to this kind of subject. (guitar playing, or hell almost every aspect of life)

By choosing not to learn that style, type of music, or songs the only thing that will happen as a result is he won't learn that style, type of music, or those songs. Thats it. Soo...

I haven't heard nile or this solo that hes speaking of, but i would definitely say similar things about most if not all slayer solos and osme other bands solos i've heard. They're cool and all but i have no motivation what so ever to learn something that sounds like a frenzy of notes, that barely seem like they should be strung together.

It appears those who write death metal (this is an observation) and at least those who are new, or not experienced in it violate this kind of writing more often than others. But then again almost all death metal sounds liek this to me. (i'm refering back to a frenzy of notes that barely seem like they should be strung together). I've learned more and more in life that just because you CAN do something, doesn't always mean you SHOULD.

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I'm really glad to get this much input from you guys (although some of you have veered off topic)

I messaged Drac on the bare knuckle Pups web page and he suggested these 4 pickups to me with these descriptions:

1. Miracle Man-VERY METAL! -the most brutality/edge-the least 'universal'
2.Warpig(stock )-drives hard, cleans up nicely...
3.Warpig (ceramic)-bit crispier than stock
4.Nailbomb-tight compressed chords, fluid lead sound


So from these descriptions, the Miracle Man sounds like my best bet right? Anyone else have experience with any of these pickups?

The Miracle Man are designed to get "EMG81 on record" tone live..
Warpig is kickass..
http://www.soundclick.com/util/down...&key=DBE7F95E-1
Good idea of it.. Warpig -> Engl Powerball -> Matching V60 cab

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I would still choose the Warpig over the Miracle Man. That pickup just decimates.

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Ok so now there is only the matter of choosing between Ceramic Warpig or Alnico V Warpig...

I'm guessing that Leads would cut through more nicely with the Alnico V but Rhythm would be more brutal with ceramic?

I dont restrict myself to death metal, Ive played in several projects from power metal, progressive, death metal, funk, jazz, black metal, metalcore, and even classical. I say classical because I didnt want to list all the subgenres of classical (baroque, romantic, etc...)
Im younger than most people who are trying to get a career in music, but that doesnt mean that Im assuming anything. I'm speaking from experience.


if you want to play professionally, then no...you cant.

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Good choice with the warpig, it makes a fuckin dimarzio super distortion look like a paf

Now, Alnico is a bit spongier than ceramic because it has a slightly weaker magnetic field. It's also has a slight bit less trebel. Advantage: it can produce clean tones despite its rediculous output. These have been recommended to jazz players. Also recommended to hard rock and metal players who want a more vintage vibe with the spongier attack.

Ceramic is uber tight, uber clear, uber high output. Only downside, it has no chance of producing a clean tone unless you coil split it. Is pretty much specialized for anything high gain.

I play metal, but i like stoner styled metal (not as tight, more vintage based, requires clean sometimes), therefore i would get the alnico. But if you're going to specialize this guitar for straight up anus tearing eye blistering deathmetal, go ceramic.

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This is what Tim told me when i enquired about a Miracle Man pup for my Ran:



I've gone with the Nailbomb, but i haven't installed it yet.

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Thanks for all of your help man. You've really helped me out a lot.


Ceramic it is!


Also thanks to everyone who contributed to this thread for helping me make my decision. I've never bought a custom first hand before (I have a Carvin DC 400A but it was used when I got it) and I want this to be the only death metal guitar I will ever need/want. Thanks for bringing me closer to my dream axe.

Yup, bleeding pretty much nailed it. I would go with Alnico is there is even a possibility you may play some cleans. I dont particularly care for ceramic pickups, but I like a warmer tone so they would work the best for blistering distortion.

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so i've been doing some reading, and i just found out that Cocobolo is rosewood. Its just a different species of rosewood.
Other fun facts: its oily and doesnt like to be glued, and the dust from cutting it is toxic!

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Indeed, Warmoth no longer works with Cocobolo because of this, pussies.

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hahaha, also gives some excuse to Alembic for their high prices... but making a guitar entirely out of toxic wood still will never warrant a minimum price of 30k.

EDIT: ADDED:
and what even ruins them further is that all of their cutting is done with a CNC machine. Like, if you're guna charge that much, WHY THE FUCK ARE THEY MACHINE MADE... same goes for PRS.

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With PRS's there is still a lot of hand work done. Personally thats my favorite: CNC shaped, hand finished. IMO hand made instruments arent worth a shit unless it was your hands that made them. If some asshole crafted my guitar by hand, I wouldnt care because it wasnt my hands that did the crafting. Hand made instruments have such poor quality control anyway, a guitar could turn out shitty just because someone was having a bad day. Case in point, read some of the harmony central reviews of Ed Romans beloved Quicksliver guitars.

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I don't think Ed Roman is a stand-out guy anyway, he builds shit for cheap on purpose, he is the ultimate cunt!

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I don't know what that last point you were trying to make was, as Quicksilver guitars are CnC made.

According to Ed Romans sight, Quickslivers are handmade.

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As most already know, Ed Roman is a fucking liar and a fraud

^ He is absolutely right. Google "Ed Roman" +asshole.. hehe.

"Results 1 - 10 of approx. 417 for "ed roman" +"nice guy"."
"Results 1 - 10 of approx. 899 for "ed roman" +asshole"

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True, id much rather believe you over him.

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Pic of Guitar

Here are the specs I ordered:

3 piece Maple Neck (oiled)

Mahogany Body (Black w/ Bloody Spear Painted Headstock)

Ebony fretboard w/ Ankh inlays

Kahler Trem w/ R4 locking nut (I got the locking nut that comes with the floyd but a Kahler Bridge )

Sperzel locking tuners

Dunlop flushmount straplocks

27" Baritone scale-22 frets

Hardshell case included

I also ordered a Warpig bridge pickup from Bareknuckle and he's going to install that for me. I got the Battle Worn Black cover because it is generally badass:
Pic of Pickup1

Pic of Pickup2





So, what do you guys think?
Thanks again to Bleeding and anyone else who helped me out.

It looks like that guitar that dallas uses in the sacrifice unto sebek video.
but black.
its vuury seck-c

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You mean Karl? Yeah, it is his design/model, it would only make sense that he would use it eh?

isnt karl the one with the dean V?
Im talking about the other guy.

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Looks good, don't poke your eye out.

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Nah, the blond haired guy is Karl Sanders.