Schecter Omen 6 - Rebuild
Posted: Sun Nov 07, 2010 9:52 pm
Some time ago, I purchased a Schecter Omen 6 body and neck from a guy on the Agile guitar forum. I thought it would be an easy way to get into putting a guitar together because I knew the neck fit the body and all of the holes were already drilled. Well. Things didn't turn out to be easy.
I was plagued by many small problems, ranging from having trouble finding pickup bezels that fit the existing holes to needed to use long and short neck screws because the body is contoured at the neck joint. Then I got all that stuff fixed and realized that the strings didn't line up over the pickups correctly. I tried out three different bridges and none of them worked right.
But then the other day I traded a pedal for a pair of Dimarzio pickups. I figured maybe I'd pop them in the old Schecter project, as I had no other real place to put them.
Lo and behold, the problem with the string spacing wasn't a problem with string spacing. The Omen 6, even though it is a string-through body with no trem, is set up for F-spaced pickups. Once I got the Dimarzio humbucker in the bridge, everything "magically" lined up properly with the *first* bridge I bought.
So here she is (below), nearly 9 months later. I used an Allparts mounting ring in the neck to place the single coil-sized Dimarzio Air Norton S. Yeah, it's different looking. Very different. Maybe even ugly, but I like it. Bridge pickup is a D-Activator.
The toggle is a 3-way Les Paul style. The tone control has a DPDT push-pull switch, and I have it wired up to tap both pickups.
Overall, I'm still getting a feel for how it sounds. I like what I'm hearing so far. The neck pickup sounds fantastic when tapped (almost like my Strat's neck pickup). The bridge is punchy and a little honky, but without a crazy amount of ice-pick treble. I still need to mess around more with pickup height and the pole piece height on the D-Activator, but I'm already pleased with the outcome.
The light is crappy in my workarea, and the flash is not showing the true colors. I'll do up another pic tomorrow in proper outdoor light.
I was plagued by many small problems, ranging from having trouble finding pickup bezels that fit the existing holes to needed to use long and short neck screws because the body is contoured at the neck joint. Then I got all that stuff fixed and realized that the strings didn't line up over the pickups correctly. I tried out three different bridges and none of them worked right.
But then the other day I traded a pedal for a pair of Dimarzio pickups. I figured maybe I'd pop them in the old Schecter project, as I had no other real place to put them.
Lo and behold, the problem with the string spacing wasn't a problem with string spacing. The Omen 6, even though it is a string-through body with no trem, is set up for F-spaced pickups. Once I got the Dimarzio humbucker in the bridge, everything "magically" lined up properly with the *first* bridge I bought.
So here she is (below), nearly 9 months later. I used an Allparts mounting ring in the neck to place the single coil-sized Dimarzio Air Norton S. Yeah, it's different looking. Very different. Maybe even ugly, but I like it. Bridge pickup is a D-Activator.
The toggle is a 3-way Les Paul style. The tone control has a DPDT push-pull switch, and I have it wired up to tap both pickups.
Overall, I'm still getting a feel for how it sounds. I like what I'm hearing so far. The neck pickup sounds fantastic when tapped (almost like my Strat's neck pickup). The bridge is punchy and a little honky, but without a crazy amount of ice-pick treble. I still need to mess around more with pickup height and the pole piece height on the D-Activator, but I'm already pleased with the outcome.
The light is crappy in my workarea, and the flash is not showing the true colors. I'll do up another pic tomorrow in proper outdoor light.
