Schecter PT Special Electric Guitar - Purple Burst Reviews
If you're spying a vintage-flavored electric guitar with undeniable style and snarling tone, then you must plug a Schecter PT Special into your favorite amplifier. Built from a solid slab of swamp ash, this T-style axe simply bleeds harmonic resonance, while a custom set of Diamond pickups serve up classic, muscular-sounding tones by the truckload. You also get a push-pull that toggles between series and parallel pickup wiring, providing access to a multitude of mind-bending tones. The easy playability of the PT Special’s satin-finished, rosewood-capped maple neck and top-shelf hardware, including Grover Vintage tuners, put the finishing touches on the PT Special.
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Highest Rated Reviews
Super solid, stage worthy
Nice high end in the bridge and a warm, thick 90 in the neck. Great feeling neck I'd say just slimmer than a medium C. Perfect fret work both dressed and polished! That alone goes a long way because in my experience that makes or breaks a guitarists first impressions. Schecter is well known for their fit and finish so I was happy to see the consistency and sustainability even in the import models. Great experience through SweetWater per usual.
Weird, but wonderful
As others have said, this looks like a tele, but doesn't sound like one. Nor does it sound like Schecter's other, weighty guitars (that are pretty much designed for metal). It's something a bit different, but it's exactly what I was looking for - has lovely clean tones (NOT twangy!) and a lot of bottom end for chunky rhythm work.
Also, this looks SO much better in real life - the photos here are very pink, and a bit washed out - the actual colours are much richer.
Schecter PT Special
This guitar is a absolute beauty. Can't believe the tone of the P90. No regrets for the money spent. Usuallly buy high end-teaches me to be more open minded on my instruments. Can't put it down right now. Thanks Seeetwater and my man Chris Nunley
Dan aka Musicman
Almost perfect
My wife got this for me as a birthday gift. I love the look of a T-style body, but I am used to playing my PRS which has fantastically comfortable body ergonomics. Other T-style guitars have always felt wrong either in the body contours or in the neck joint. This guitar is one of the most comfortable guitars I've played and easily feels as good as my PRS SE guitars. The satin neck is thin but still quite comfortable. The frets are perfect and had no issues. They were nicely finished on the ends. The body is light and I love the satin finish. I do woodworking as a hobby and I have always felt that a nice satin finish is the best way to show off a piece of wood. The purple is a bit funky but I like that it is something unique. The pickups sound good. As it was adjusted from the factory the bridge pickup was very high and thus very hot. I have lowered both pickups significantly to allow them to blend better. The neck P-90 is very full and clear sounding as long as the tone knob is up. I did replace the saddles with Gotoh intonated brass saddles. The stock ones were fine and intonated well, but I preferred the look of these and it was a cheap swap.
So why did I dock it half a star? The factory tone knob is just OK. While it does allow you to use the series wiring via push-pull, the taper had all of the tone adjustment from around 0 to 0.5 or 1 on the dial at the very beginning of its rotation. Dialing back from 10 to 1 had almost no perceivable difference in the tone. This is a problem because the bridge pickup is much brighter than the neck pickup and needs to have treble tamed if you're running a bright amp like my Marshall. I could dial in a nice bridge tone or neck tone, but trying to swap from neck to bridge was a hassle because there was only a small pint in the rotation that sounded right. I have now swapped out the pot for a CTS 30% taper pot from Sweetwater and this guitar is immensely more enjoyable. This only cost me about $10 and some time with a soldering iron. The wiring diagram is easily found on Google. I will be replacing the knobs while I'm at it, but I am sure I could have made the original knob work with a few minutes and a drill bit (it was just a bit too tight to fit on the new CTS pot). With the new taper on the tone pot I can set the tone around 7 or 8 and it sounds great on both pickups.
TLDR: This guitar is great, I love it. I would recommend swapping the tone pot. I want another one now to convert to regular telecaster pickups.
Not a tele but something else
Let's get to it
Pros:
Amazing specs, Tusq Nut, hot rodded pickups, beautiful neck, great tone, well built.
Cons:
This is subjective, but this is no tele.
Pickups are super hot they're not enough for modern metal but they could play some 80s thrash.
The clean tone just isn't twangy like a tele.
The feel for me was just off. The fretboard felt sunken in like an Ibanez and really put me off on this guitar.
But none of this makes it a bad guitar!
If that's your style you'll love this instrument, if I could change the feel of this guitar I'd deal with the hotter pickups.
Great guitar, some QC issues
This guitar is pretty unbeatable on price, features and tone. Out of the box it was mostly in tune, frets were reasonably dressed, action was great. Unfortunately the pickup selector switch fell apart immediately. I imagine this was just bad luck given the electronics are decent quality. Thankfully I've built a few guitars over the years and my wife is an assembly tech at a large guitar manufacturer. We had the parts and I was able to swap in a new switch. The pickup heights were a bit off, I'd expect a bump in volume switching from the bridge single to the P90, but it was a relatively huge change, again no big deal to adjust the heights.
Overall this is a fantastic alternative to a traditional tele. Most of my playing is done with a worship band and this guitar checks off a lot of boxes when it comes to tone, playability, and style. Also, at the price point, this may be a great instrument to learn to handle basic repairs and maintenance. The solid build quality makes this guitar a bit more forgiving if you goof adjusting the truss rod or swapping out parts.
I've found over the years that schecters are great bang for your buck instruments as long as you have some ability to handle minor repairs and adjustments. If you're thinking about it, I'd say go for it.
