Strandberg Guitar Initial Impressions

although schramberg has a significant following there are still many more guitarists who are nervous about some of its extreme design features luckily for you I'm the most detailed picky annoying guitar reviewer on all of YouTube and today marks the start of season one of the experiment the series where I explore a single gear category in extreme detail over an extended period of time for the next 30 days and well over 100 hours of play time I will exclusively be using schramberg guitars along the way I'll document my thoughts try competitors and answer every question you have as well as many more you probably never thought to ask I'm Andre flood this expensive idea is still not sponsored and welcome to episode 1 of The schramberg Experiment today's episode will focus on the design features that brought me to schramberg the process I used to select this 2019 Bowden Fusion neck through my initial impressions of the build quality and finally a discussion of my first two weeks using the indoor neck and spoiler alert there was some pain involved but it's not the pain you may be be thinking so you'll need to stick around until then now I've been playing guitar for 19 years and although many have recommended that I try streamwork because of its ergonomics I found my way to this brand by searching for other features over the last six months I've been looking for modern guitars that have features like stainless steel Frets locking tuners floating Bridges and and a thick neck and that last attribute the thick neck is shockingly hard to find on Modern guitars in addition to a thick neck I've also been wanting to try flat fretboards I was hoping to find something totally flat like the fretboard found on classical guitars but the only electric guitar that I know that has a totally flat fretboard is the VGA Sean Lane signature model which I don't feel like buying just yet now flat fret boards are immediately just a curiosity I have lately but the bigger neck is a requirement for my plank see in the past I've broken my elbow and I've dealt with chronic wrist issues as well and my wrist issues in particular are far more difficult to manage when I play thinner necks which is why I have a thick neck fixation and this is where schramberg came to my radar although this is not a spec that is commonly discussed the neck on these guitars is surprisingly thick and the 20 inch fretboard radius is also incredibly flat that rare spec combo brought me to the schramberg not the indoor neck in fact the in door neck is the reason I avoided schramberg's thus far see I prefer a very round neck and I even disliked the one sharp cornered on a v-neck and as a result I assumed that the two corners found on the door neck would be a horrible experience for me personally at the same time however there have also been claims that the endurance that can actually help people like myself who have had arrest issues in the past so I guess that makes me even more qualified for this long-term experiment I haven't found any scientific research supporting the claim that schramberg and dornex can help with wrist issues but at the same time it often takes scientific studies a while to catch up to truths that are found by a real world trial and error moreover Ola schramberg's preference for a thick neck with a flat fretboard gave me hope that the Endor neck might actually be useful for me personally again I'm going to go into a lot more details about my experience with the indoor neck later in this video and throughout the series so once I decided that I'd be giving schramberg a try I had to select my six string model my first requirement of a floating Bridge eliminates the Salem Jazz and the Salem Deluxe which is a shame because my two favorite visuals on a guitar are f-holes and any type of modern tele design they all look really cool maybe I can play one of those in the future my final two preferences of an hsh or an HH pickup configuration with a neck through design that posed a bigger issue they make plenty of bolt-on guitars that have humbucker humbucker configurations or HSS configurations but the only current option with these specs along with the nectar design is the plini signature model and that's a beautiful guitar but it's out of my current price range looking at stromberg's older product line brought me to this guitar diffusion nectar which was an amazing model for 2019 only this guitar also came with short pickups which I've Loved ever since I installed one of my Parker guitars years ago moreover I heard rumors that this 2019 model was discontinued because they were too expensive to produce which if true makes this a hot commodity in my opinion they sold for around two thousand nine hundred dollars in 2019 and I was lucky enough to find one used in excellent condition for 2400 and I believe this seller is also a viewer of this channel hi if you're watching by the way these pickups sound absolutely amazing I did notice a strange immediacy to the notes especially when I'm playing these chords like this [Music] the notes just feel like they're getting to my ear and my body faster I'm not sure if that makes any sense but it would almost be like if you were used to playing guitar with a bit of a delay in your software and then all of a sudden it was immediate so I I feel this really odd immediacy to the note it's not bad it's just new for me and I will say when I'm playing with overdrive and I'm playing more Legato stuff that immediacy is really really satisfying and I've noticed that my Legato playing just feels a bit more accurate because I'm feeling the connection between the the sound and my hand a bit faster if that makes sense so for example when I'm playing stuff like this that immediacy is just really really nice uh let's see [Music] [Applause] all of that stuff is really really nice I really enjoyed the bridge pickup it is very crunchy and smooth for my Legato stuff and I'm also finding it very articulate at the same time especially with the overdrive setting if you appreciate this level of detail it really helps if you give this video a like also don't forget to leave your Scrambler questions below so I can answer them in the next episode of the series and that brings me to another very important Point although my objective in this series is to review stramberg as a brand the guitar I'm using for the majority of the testing is used on one hand there's always the possibility that wear and tear or even mistreatment of a used instrument can impact the playability once I get it on the other hand I know a lot of you are average people like me who like to buy their gear use so knowing how an instrument above two thousand dollars holds up after multiple users is a fair point of discussion in my opinion most importantly however stramberg listens to its fans which is something I will always love about any company guitar or otherwise as a result as I go through the features on this older model I'll do my best to also explain how stramberg has responded over the years the player's feedback when applicable and maybe if we're lucky I'll get to try one of the newer models to compare later in the series now I know we guitarists love to buy and mod guitars I'm exactly the same way but when someone like Ola strandberg or Ken Parker when they design a guitar I really feel like it's a work of art made by a Craftsman and we should really experience it as it was intended by them before modding in fact I either went out of my way to buy the expensive stramberg strap to make sure this is as real an experience as possible speaking of craftsmanship if you would like to know more about my own personal guitar Journey check out my crafting a guitar series and you can also check out my guitar craft and other stuff podcast and the guitar craft newsletter all linked below for those who are unaware every headless guitar has some type of locking mechanism up here on the neck and this basically allows the strings to lock in place since there are no tuners in this area and schramberg's version well stromberg's version on this 2019 guitar has a couple of issues I should tell you about see if you're it says string up the guitar as you normally would and then clip the excess string after you strung through you're going to have these little sharp pieces of string that are poking out right here and that's because you can't clip them close enough to stop that from happening and this may not seem like a big deal if you've never played a headless guitar but I'm telling you for some strange reason I noticed that when playing a headless guitar my fingers end up in this area far more than I ever assumed they would and if you don't have a perfectly cut string it's going to be poking you here and it will even draw blood it's very annoying and I don't like it the other issue with this type of mechanism here is that this corner is very sharp it's a perfect right angle and it's not fun to bump into when you're moving your hand this way so as I move down boom right there [Music] so I have to kind of modify and really throw my hand in the air to avoid that and it's you know I I've gotten used to it but it's definitely something you have to consider and I'm not sure if In the Heat of the Moment I would remember to throw my hand in the air to avoid doing that now again stramberg listens to their fans and I see that the newer Hardware is updated to fix those issues and hopefully we can try that in the future and hopefully schramberg starts selling those as Replacements so that we can buy them aftermarket and put them all in our old Stromberg guitars that being said the old Hardware isn't a deal breaker to me I found my own workaround so when I String up the guitar I take a marker and I Mark where the string meets the locking mechanism that I pull the string back out and I clip it right behind that marker mark then when I put the string back through and lock it I have a nice flush area right here and no strings that are poking me fairly simple solution once the string leaves the locking mechanism it runs over a Teflon nut and a zero fret and I really like zero Frets I discuss them in much more detail in my VGA video I'll link it right up here long story short having a zero fret allows you to get lower action much easier without worrying about the nut being cut perfectly and I like it a lot I'm happy it's here we also have 24 stainless steel fan Frets so on the base side the length is 25 and a half and on the treble side it is 25 in terms of the Fret work the leveling is done very well and I can get the strings down very low and I enjoy that quite a bit that being said there is an issue with Fred Sprout on his guitar and I understand this is a used guitar I totally get that but when this thing was new it sold for over three thousand dollars with tax and I have other very expensive guitars made by VGA and Parker etc etc that are old and used and I've never had this much bread Sprout I don't actually notice any roughness when I'm playing so it's not something that I feel like I need to run out and get fixed right away in fact I probably won't fix that at all because it just isn't messing with my playability interestingly enough the only time the French brought has been an issue is when I'm playing finger style stuff and it's an issue for my right thumb and that's because when I'm playing finger style I'll put my thumb right here at the base of the neck and sometimes when I'm plucking that low E string my thumb will actually catch the front Sprout on the 24th and 23rd fret I just move my thumb backwards slightly or from a bit more accurate like I should be it isn't really an issue the neck itself is also roasted Maplewood reinforcements and we have lumenly side dots and of course the indoor neck profile which I promise I'm going to talk about a little bit later uh the next thing I noticed is that since we have this fan along with the side dots uh it's kind of throws your brain off at least it's throwing my brain off a little bit so far I'm sure I'll get used to it over time because you know I don't sit there and stare at the fretboard while I'm playing but we all look down to get a glance of where we are using the side dots and since my left hand fingers are behind the side dot because of the fan it's a bit confusing so for example when I look down right here and I play right here this is actually a chord on that's on the 12th fret Frets 12 11 and 10. but when I just look down quickly it feels like that this chord that starts on the 12th is actually on the 10th a bit of an optical illusion there for my brain but again I'll sure I'll get used to that as we go now regular viewers of the channel will know that I am absolutely obsessed with neck joints and neck through guitars and I've been obsessed with these type of things ever since I saw the original Parker fly guitar that thing changed the way that I look at how guitars connect to bodies and my God stramberg did an amazing job with this design it flows perfectly into the body it just disappears in your hand it's just this is an amazing heel joint in addition to having that amazing sculpting on the heel joint we also have this nice lower horn and I've talked about this a lot in many of my other videos but I'll just say it here briefly when it comes to having a lower horn if the lower horn starts to jut out this way like a normal Fender guitar although you have hybrid access when you're actually playing it's very like that your hand is going to be hitting the horn itself which is very annoying and it impedes the way you can play okay this stramberg guitar has a perfect upper horn no matter what I'm playing or how I'm playing no matter how high I go my hand absolutely never it's this little horn this thing is perfect along with the heel joint I couldn't be happier with this feature combination on this guitar of course the whole guitar itself is chambered so it's incredibly light about five pounds and something else that I really like is that this back plate doesn't exist uh stramberg guitars don't come with a back plate which is awesome because no one needs a back plate anyway we do have the back plane here for the control cavity and this is made out of some type of aluminum so that's a nice touch and we have a nice input jack that is tucked away into the instrument so that you can place it in different ways as you sit and the input jack won't get in the way you can also tuck it behind your strap when you're playing live so it won't get pulled out while you're playing very very nice on the back we also have a nice belly cut and on the front we have a nice forearm Contour but the forearm Contour is not too extreme which is another one of my pet peeves again I talk about this in my other videos point being the body design of this guitar is fantastic and although it looks kind of strange well I think it looks cool but it might look strange to you when you're actually playing it it just feels like a normal guitar and then of course we have this very nice flamed Maple top starting from the neck pickup I noticed something very interesting right away as you know this is called the fusion model and a lot of fusion players like to have a single coil in the neck position well I noticed that this guitar although it's a humbugger in the neck when you're using a pick in the neck position it sounds a lot like a single coil pickup [Music] thank you [Music] and I find that really interesting because the second I stop using the pick and I use my fingers then it sounds like a jazzy neck pickup [Music] foreign and at first I thought okay that's just because I'm using my fingers but but if I try to make it quack like a single coil pickup on my fingers it just doesn't do it because it's a humbucker [Music] it just doesn't quack like a single coil of wood so when you use a pick sounds like a single coil when you use your fingers it sounds like a low output humbucker fine in the next position we have the uh one of the coils from the neck pickup and the middle pickup and it sounds somewhat stratty but it doesn't really sound like a traditional Strat it kind of has this different slightly fatter sound [Music] but it's a very nice sound indeed when we move to the middle position this is where things get gets interesting because on this guitar you cannot activate this middle coil unless it's mixed with other pickups so in this middle position what we're having is a neck pickup we're having the front coil from the neck pickup and the rear coil from their Bridge pickup so this is almost like a Telecaster style middle position setting foreign [Music] and then we then you can hear that this is a very quacky position this actually has the quack that's the outer position so far didn't have [Music] so that's a nice sound then we have uh one of the single coils from the bridge and the middle position and this sounds like you think it would it's very bright it's very chimey and this is one of my favorite tones to use on this guitar for a clean setting and when using some of my chords things like this [Music] foreign Crystal Clean sound [Music] and finally the bridge pickup is also nice I'd say it feels like a medium output output pickup so it has a bit of crunch it really comes to life with the distorted setting but even in a clean foreign [Music] you can hear it's really pushing the amp um and it's making it break up a bit more than the other pickups were so that's how those are the characteristics of the pickups in my opinion and I'll play some quick stuff with some uh more distorted sounds here's the next position [Music] and you can tell again in this case when you have drive and you're using a pick then it sounds like a low output humbucker so you don't have that single coil sound in this setting this next pickup is very interesting because of how unique and dynamic it is foreign [Music] middle [Music] now we're in that fake tele position [Music] foreign [Music] now to the Bridget middle setting again [Music] and as you can tell when I use these mixed settings I can still get a decent sound with these complex chords even though I'm using Drive [Music] then the bridge pickup of course is very nice it's fat it's smooth but it's not overwhelming and I like that because I tend to like lower output pickups even with humbucker so I like the way the bridge sounds a lot [Music] foreign thing I do notice about the bridge pickup with overdrive is that it can get a little bit too [Music] um dry sounding if that makes sense I I don't really know how to explain it but something about the top end and the mids on a drive setting kind of feel dehydrated if that makes sense so I found if I just rolled a tone knob down to you know about six or so then it kind of makes it sound a bit more pleasant at least to my ears [Music] so that's what I think about the pickups so let's talk about the hardware now and really I need to spend a lot more time with this bridge before I can give you my full Impressions but I have to tell you so far it's different than other bridges that I have tried and keep in mind I've tried at least two other headless guitar floating Bridges this one is very different here's the first thing I originally set this up with just two Springs and I had to Max this out and push this all the way down to get it to float properly with just two Springs and the second I change the strings even a little bit to slightly higher gauge I had to add a third spring to get this to float properly so I just find that kind of odd I can usually float a tremble my strings totally fine with just two Springs whatever that's not a big deal the other thing that I notice is that even when you're using just two Springs and these very very light strings the bridge itself is still very very stiff and that's not a bad thing or a good thing it's just a personal preference I like to have my bridge feel very very light so that I can manipulate it with the slightest touch from my pinky I can't do that with this bridge because of how stiff it is that being said over the course of playing it for a couple of weeks I got used to the stiffness of the bridge and I don't find it to be an issue at all in fact I think that it might actually be better as a stiffer Bridge because when you're tuning it it doesn't flop around at all it makes tuning it much easier when I've tried tuning other uh headless guitars with floating Bridges it was much more difficult to tune because as you were turning it you're moving the bridge and that gets annoying that happens a lot less with this stiffer Bridge so maybe that was the intention all along the other thing that I've noticed with this bridge is I'm having a hard time getting the arm to be exactly how I want it and again initial Impressions I need to spend more time fine-tuning it so this is not my full dots I'm just saying so far okay so I like to have the bridge the arm itself where it basically moves freely right where gravity will make it a fall and I like to have it set that way because I like to have the arm in my hand at all times when I'm playing and I don't want to have to add extra force with my right hand to get the bridge to move as I'm picking up and down the strings so if I have it set like this where it just Falls with gravity as I'm playing it just kind of Falls and follows my hand without any issues thing is that what I've noticed with this bridge that I haven't noticed with my other Bridges is that when I set it to this particular setting that I like it has a little bit of movement left and right see if you can hear that so that little bit of movement when I'm trying to play you know it's not a deal breaker it's not a big deal but it's not as Flawless as say my Vega trim or my Parker trims or some of the other trims that I have used over the years again there might be a way for me to tighten something up in there and I'm going to try to do so as I play the guitar more and more but at least so far that's one small issue that I'm having still nothing that's a big issue editor Andre here again and so yes I know I can just use an allen wrench and tighten the arm down very easily with the set screw back here that's pretty obvious but what I'm saying is that usually when I set the set screw and I get it to that nice position it doesn't move around the way I was just showing you also you'll notice that I have the Allen wrench out and I have it out on my desk at all times now because I'm noticing that I have to basically re-tighten it every two hours or so and again usually I just kind of set that and forget it so again I might be able to fix that with some type of alteration some type of modification maybe just tightening something inside of the tremolo itself because I haven't taken it apart but initial oppressions that's what I've noticed so of course we have a five-way switch and I showed you the pickups ready but I want to talk to you about these now placements because this is something that I also find very interesting about this guitar so I usually don't like having a volume knob right here because I find when I'm playing a strat or any other guitar that has a volume knob in this area when I'm strumming like this or playing things like this I'm constantly hitting the volume knob and it's very very annoying I don't know how or why this is different because it looks the same when you look at the instrument but when I'm playing this guitar no matter how I strum I never hit the volume knob and again I don't know how that works I don't know why it works that way but it just does and to me this is a game changer because now I can easily reach my volume on my pinky and I can still do all of my strumming stuff where in the past I've had to sacrifice my pinky reach ability in order to stop my hand from smacking into the volume knob so somehow Ola schramberg figured out some type of alchemy and made that perfect as well let's talk about the indoor neck because this is the thing that everyone talks about this is the thing that scares everyone and I have a few initial thoughts about the door neck all right so I'm editing the video and I just wanted to let you know as I talk about the indoor neck I keep saying in dornik but what I really mean is that in door neck plus the fan Frets because those two things work together and you can't buy a Scrambler without buying the fan Frets with the indoor neck so keep in mind when I'm talking about all the stuff what I really mean is the combination of the door neck plus the fan Frets now I will say that the first day I had this guitar and was playing it for my regular 90 minute practice session by the 30 or 40 minute mark my hand started hurting so I just got through my first session using the Scrambler guitar the session was about 1 hour and 54 minutes and throughout the time I took some notes on what I was noticing now 20 minutes into my session I also started to get a bit of pain in my wrist and a bit of pain in my elbow you know I really shouldn't even call it pain I'm gonna call it fatigue because this is not the type of pain you feel when you have an injury this is more the type of pain you feel when you've worked a muscle you haven't worked in the past I also started feeling some fatigue in my muscles and my back not the major muscles like the um rhomboids and trapezius and the lats but some of the deeper muscles that are connecting the ribs to the spine at least that's my interpretation I felt some some strain there and again if you ever work on your posture you'll start to notice those muscles are getting stronger and sort of feel fatigued if you haven't been using them I think that's more fatigue from being in this really nice perfect upright position as well only on day two now and already all of the fatigue that I started to get in my left hand and my elbow area is completely gone and my hands feel great and the fatigue I told you about that was in my deep muscles of the back that's also totally gone and I've been feeling amazing so the endorn neck definitely isn't hurting me so that's good I mentioned earlier in the video that I don't even like v-necks because I don't like sharp angle so the question is how do these sharp angles on the indoor neck feel when I first got the guitar in day two in particular the angles on this and door neck were giving me some type of issues so the session started with some chordal playing and the first thing that I noticed is that I can't play all of my bar chords you know the simple bar chords you know major minor all of that stuff is fine but I have a few of these minor seven at different extension type chords like this [Music] and I quite like them and because of the fan on this stramberg guitar I can't play these in every position I can play them on a regular guitar if I try to move this shape to the 10th fret it's very very difficult for a couple of reasons the first thing is that the fan is going this way so when I stack my fingers vertically I can't really get a good stack on them it's forcing me to turn in a way that's not very comfortable and also when I'm playing these chords uh the back of the schramberg guitar since it has those sharp Corners it's coming in contact with my bone and my thumb so there's creating a bit of this it's creating a bit of pressure on my thumb forcing my hand to turn in a strange way and it's not really allowing me to play that chord in particular like I said down here down here it's doable said or that's not using a lot of strange barring Works totally fine so all of my major uh my normal chords like this and like this [Music] they're all totally fine the next thing is that chords above the 12th fret no matter what type of chords they are are a bit more tricky because you can as you get above 12th fret the fan gets more uh dramatic so chords like this [Music] up here it's just it's not doable because of the fan other chords like this are totally fine so far [Music] yesterday I mentioned having some issues with the indoor neck and playing certain chords and this one chord in particular which I quite like that one was giving me the most trouble well I found a workaround in order to play that at a higher fret and basically I was used to playing that chord with my first finger barred fairly low like this you can see the tip of my first finger is barely passing the fretboard and when you play it like that that chord is almost impossible because of the way your fingers are stacked however if you were to if you take that bar like I've been doing now and push it higher see before it was here and now I'm using it like this then it gets even easier to play that chord so with that new technical workaround I can play that chord again I still can't play any of the chords that I like above the 12th fret really it's a it's about on the 15th fret forward but even right here these chords are hard because of the stack so again I'm losing a few chords as we move up in this extreme area but any chord that doesn't use barring for example this chord very nice major chord [Music] that's still possible above the 12th fret and with this and door neck fan that area of my thumb kept pressing the corner of the and door neck and that was causing me significant discomfort and I don't even remember when that stopped happening but sometime during day three my hand just stopped being in that area so I feel like my hand naturally learned how to use the indoor neck over the course of about three hours or so and ever since it has not been an issue I have not noticed it being there it doesn't feel weird or strange and even when I first got it it didn't feel weird I just noticed it here and there because it's you know a unique thing and after playing it for you know 15 or 20 hours now I just feels like a regular guitar to me there are a few instances where it does feel kind of interesting so the chord I'm about to play is an F dominant seven chord with the third and the bass it looks and sounds like this [Music] foreign thing is that this is the first time the first chord that I played where I noticed this in door neck feels different in a good way and that's because when you're playing this chord in this position your thumb is perfectly rested on the top flat area and the rest of your hand is rested perfectly on the bottom flat area and so it almost feels like this guitar was made for playing this one chord in particular one thing I should also mention about the indoor neck is that I play a very Legato based style and when I'm playing my Legato stuff then door neck puts my thumb in the exact perfect position for that style so usually it should be down in this area like this and that's where the indoor neck puts it and as I'm playing it just sits there in the right spot without issue so I do think that the indoor neck is interesting I do think it feels cool so far I will say that it isn't making my posture or guitar playing on my left hand any better per se because I spent a lot of time honing in on my left hand technique but I do think that if maybe you don't have the most pretty left hand technique that this might actually be able to help you potentially I'm having a really Pleasant time using vibrato with this guitar and that's for a few different reasons number one the neck feels like I can just grab it fairly easily and I have a very easy time muting with my right hand as I said before and so because of that I can really just grab that note and really get a strong uh vibrato because I don't have to worry about the muting as much because of the position that's putting my right hand in the smoothness of the fretboard along with smoothness of the stainless steel Frets and my ability to mute very easily and accurately [Music] I feel very confident just grabbing notes [Music] and digging in and hitting them so that's been very pleasant as well but so far and again this is just initial Impressions so far to me it isn't a feature that I need and it isn't a feature that I need to get rid of it's just different it's just interesting and I'm enjoying using it so far and who knows maybe my opinion on it will change by the time I hit an hour 100. now there's still one huge feature that I need to discuss and in my opinion that feature is the most important feature on this guitar and really any other headless guitar design but we'll talk about that on episode two of the stranberg experiment

Channel: Andre Fludd

Views: 64,649

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Id: ELztp-1fIyA

Length: 39min 2sec (2342 seconds)

Published: Fri Dec 30 2022