New guitar: Chapman ML-2
I got my latest new guitar today, a Chapman ML-2.I won't do a full review of it as there's plenty of information available on the Internet about this guitar and its stablemates.Go to Youtube and search for Chapman Guitars, or Rob Chapman.The videos that he and Lee Anderton do for Anderton's Music Store are very entertaining.Anyway, this guitar ticked a lot of boxes of what I wanted in my next guitar.It's a hardtail (no whammy bar) with 24 frets and an ebony fingerboard.It has Chapman-designed pickups, which are a lot cheaper than well known brands.The design philosophy of this guitar was to have excellent basics - the body and neck in particular - and to use decent but not too expensive components that can be changed if someone wants (pickups, bridge and tuners, basically).It has two humbuckers, and a 3-position switch to select bridge, both or neck.The three knobs are 2 volumes and 1 tone, and the tone knob pulls up to coil tap the 'buckers (in the middle position, they are also out of phase when tapped).
The coil tap really expands the range of sounds that you can get from the guitar.On the two single-pickup positions, it thins out the sound and makes it a bit more acoustic.On the middle position, as it puts the pickups out of phase, it knocks out a lot of the bass tones, as you'd expect.This position is probably best with a lot more distortion / effects - I was trying the guitar out mainly with a clean tone to hear the instrument itself rather than the amp or effects.
I played the ML-2 and compared it with my other guitars, which are: a Fender Pawn Shop '72 (H-H), a Lag Arkane A100 (H-S-H) and a Brian May Special (S-S-S).I compared the bridge pickups on each guitar, and then the neck pickups.Each guitar is a bit different from the others, with the most different being the Brian May Special, probably because it has single coil pickups.The ML-2 is possibly the loudest of all four, especially on the neck pickup (and when not coil tapped - it's the only one of my guitars that has coil tapping, although the BM Special can do any combination of in / out of phase).
Unfortunately, I find it's virtually impossible to put the differences into words.The bridge pickup was maybe a little bit more twangy than my Fender, and the Fender was a little warmer on the neck.The ML-2 definitely does have a full and rich tone nonetheless.
If you really want to know the difference, I think there's no substitute for going into a guitar shop and trying it in comparison with other guitars (I did try one about 3 weeks ago).At the moment, they are only available from Anderton's in the UK (and somewhere in Sweden) so you'll have to go to Guildford!At the time of writing, Rob Chapman is in the US trying to find a retail channel, so maybe soon any US readers will have somewhere to try them out (there's one guy with a shop in Texas who has one and is willing to let people try it).
My guitar arrived almost bang in tune - I only had to tune 2 of the 6 strings.The intonation was perfect.The action is a matter of personal preference, but one thing I found unusual is the height of the TonePros bridge.It is higher off the body of the guitar than any of my others - in fact, I measured the height of the bottom E string from the body at 18mm, compared to between 11 and 13mm on my other three (and in fact only 9mm from the pickguard for my BM Special, as that is raised up from the body).No doubt related to that, the neck is slightly slanted where it meets the body, so that it tilts backwards towards the headstock.There's a photo in the following post to illustrate this.
I'm not saying that this is a bad thing, and I don't know whether this is standard on these guitars or if mine is a little different (I'll try to find out and update this post).I don't think it's a problem, but I think it's one factor that made me take a little time to get used to playing this guitar.It also makes the action noticeably higher on the high frets - I may try to adjust this down a little.
Again, related to the height of the bridge, the pickups are very high off the body (they are about 4 - 4.5mm away from the strings).Instead of having plastic or metal sides, they are bound around with black fabric, and I'm not sure if I like it that much.That's a very minor point, though, particularly as a lot of people change the pickups anyway.
The tuners are Grovers, nothing special like locking heads but perfectly good.The fretboard is ebony, as I mentioned, which was a big reason for buying this guitar.I don't know any other guitar at this price which has an ebony fretboard.
Finally, the finish and aesthetics of the guitar.The build quality looks excellent - no sharp edges, blemishes or gaps.The finish on the body is really beautiful.The wood is stained and then varnished, as far as I can tell, and the end result is spectacular.I chose the Black Cherry finish, which is obviously a dark red, and there's a band around the edge which is only varnished (it's covered when they do the staining), and that's a lovely, golden brown colour.A couple of my photos show the finish quite well, but in real life it is absolutely gorgeous.It reminds me a little bit of the finish on PRS guitars, but it's a lot less in your face because the colours are more subtle and the wood grain is closer.I think they have a unique and truly superb look - rather clean and natural, but very stylish.
That's it for now.I'll add photos in the next post, and I may update again later on when I've played it a bit more and got better used to it.For now, though, after my first evening with it, I am very happy with my purchase.One last detail - the price is £449, including a decent gig bag, which I think is a bargain for the quality. Some photos - I will try to take some more photos in better light another day, as I didn't get a decent one of the whole guitar.
1) The body - this isn't a bad photo of the finish.It changes according to the light, and the surface is quite shiny; I've tried to avoid reflections in my photos.
https://www.avforums.com/attachments/p1070302-jpg.455514/
2) The headstock, which is finished in the same way as the body.I left in the tag for the Tusq nut.
https://www.avforums.com/attachments/p1070309-jpg.455517/
3) Here you can see the slanted neck, as I mentioned, as well as the finish with the unstained band around the edge.
https://www.avforums.com/attachments/p1070311-jpg.455519/
4) This picture shows the infinity sign at the 12th fret, which has a pearlised look (although I suspect it's plastic).It looks good.
https://www.avforums.com/attachments/p1070313-jpg.455520/
5) This last picture shows the bridge and pickups - you can see that the strings are quite high off the body.Another thing I didn't mention in my review is that the neck volume knob is very close to the strings, and sometimes I found myself curling my little finger around it when I was playing.Very poor technique, I'm sure! data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAIAAAAAAAP///yH5BAEAAAAALAAAAAABAAEAAAIBRAA7
https://www.avforums.com/attachments/p1070314-jpg.455521/ Very nice finish. When I first saw this 'lined' style I thought the two halves were mismatched, why couldn't they join the two bits of wood together better to make it symmetrical? Then saw two thousand pound plus LP's all put together like this. And my Variax is exactly the same, no joining of pattern in the centre.
My Jackson has that black tape around the pickups. I too wanted to push it away with a screwdriver at first! Bridge does look high and angled from photo, be interested to know whether that is standard or not by design or they just need lowering. I don't really understand why they don't just take a block of wood, cut it down the middle and then fold it out so that the two halves are symmetrical.Maybe they look odd if they are perfectly symmetrical like that.I have seen guitars where I thought that the two halves were mismatched but I think my ML-2 looks fine - in fact, it looks as though that may be what they've done.
I've posted a question about the bridge height on the Chapman forums. When I was looking at Strats and nearly bought the Sienna-finished one except for a knot one side, the cheaper plustop strats looked 'better' finished to me than all the dearer models, because they were symmetrical! Nice looking guitar, it reminds me a bit of the ESP LTD EC series.I'm surprised the top mounted humbuckers don't have pickup rings, I would be worried of damaging the coils as pickup tape isn't exactly great protection.
The neck angle will be standard, just like a les paul. It's quite common on set neck guitars as you have more room for adjustment with string action compared to a guitar with the neck/strings parallel to the body. Also, a Tune-O-Matic bridge can only go so low before you have to make a recess into the guitar body, where as the saddles on fender style bridge or floyd rose are a lot closer to the body.
Bolt on guitars will often have a micro tilt neck plate adjuster instead, or just a simple piece of card to act as a shim. Some old fenders would have cut down plectrums or a piece of cigarette paper card, even custom shop orders have been found to have a card shim in the neck pocket!
That finish looks bookmatched to me, sometimes the grain will be a perfect mirror image, but often what happens with flame maple is the light stripes will mirror a dark stripe, and vice versa. Looks a lovely guitar, love the binding and top looks really nice. data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAIAAAAAAAP///yH5BAEAAAAALAAAAAABAAEAAAIBRAA7
Most pickup's I've bought have black tape around, it's fairly standard. Fitting Pickup rings wouldn't be a big job. If you are planning to change the pickups at all you could always have rings fitted at the same time.
Are the stock pickups voiced like standard Les Paul pickups or higher output? er.....and in English, please? data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAIAAAAAAAP///yH5BAEAAAAALAAAAAABAAEAAAIBRAA7 Er does it sound like a Les Paul or does it sound much higher gain like your LAG.
If you don't know what a standard LP sounds like I guess it's difficult to judge, but lower output warmer on the neck (muddy) and more twangy on the bridge. Higher output tend to sound much cleaner but more sterile. It is difficult to judge, as I don't have an LP, but I'd tentatively say that it's got a bit more aggressive sound, I don't think it quite does the classic warm sound that you get from the neck pickup on an LP. It's fairly twangy on the bridge pickup, but definitely not unpleasantly so, as some single coil strats can be. You're best off looking for videos on Youtube or maybe go and ask people in Rob Chapman's forums, where there are plenty of people who can answer you.
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