Samoth- full circle

Still pertaining to ESP- I recently searched for old Emperor pictures hoping to see them in their face paints or maybe a glimpse of how Ihsahn looked like with longer hair, he, he... Yes, I found them but I also found out they started with ESP guitars. In the collage above, you'd see Samoth wielding a black M-series type ESP, we know these are the early ESP models because the headstock was the Jackson type design. He then embraced a BC Rich, mostly seen during the IX Equilibrium era, moved on to Jackson & finally back to the ESP.

Separated at birth

Schecter's Riot...

BC Rich's Eagle... variation on a theme.

Draco

I managed to have a moment with the BC Rich Draco a few days ago at Davis GMC, it's not a costly instrument listing for $850.

The beveled body edges there (according to the manufacturer, it's the outline of dragon wings), actually helped the instrument's placement on the player's lap should it be employed to be played as such. However, it's not a definite solution to playing a guitar of this derivative V outline. It didn't promote balance either so you thought playing a Gibson SG sitting down was repulsive. The in-house pickups here were conceived for distortion work more than anything else. Feel-wise, the neck profile is nothing too different from my other BC Rich, the Beast Jr; very rounded & possesses enough grip to exclude it from being a shred guitar primarily.

Gun salute

There are actually many shred-worthy guitars around; it's not far-fetched to conclude that every manufacturer has something in store for the fleet-fingered. Availability is another issue altogether, yes? The above BC Rich Gunslinger model is new for 2011 & it's an absolute stunner; BC Rich don't just churn out pointy units for the slaughtering heavy metal dweebs, yes? Just wish it's available here for our considerations.

EDIT: The manufacturer's website specified the humbuckers here to be DiMarzio's X2N but I'm not aware this humbucker comes in the pole-pieces version as depicted above.

BC Rich strings

Was at Davis. Bought strings. Headed home.

Great packaging but not environment-friendly.

BC Rich Strings: $6.00
Davis GMC