Dave Sloven
Ambassador of DOOM!
I kind of looks like a mixture of the Iceman and the Avenger, but better
Something sweet incoming
- Thread starter eclecticsynergy
- Start date
Dave Sloven
Ambassador of DOOM!
Is there only 40 of these made?
It has the Wilkinson VS100 tremolo
"You can do all kinds of crazy stuff with it"
It has the Wilkinson VS100 tremolo
"You can do all kinds of crazy stuff with it"
OP
eclecticsynergy
Ambassador of Electric Synergy
$699 including fitted case. I jumped right away before somebody else could.Very unique and beautiful guitar, congrats...
How much $?
Half expected the sale not to go through, but once a manager approves an asking price nobody questions it. (Got a crazy deal on a Martin HD28 coupla years ago too. It was unplayable and the sales kid said it was only good for a wall ornament. But really it just had a cracked bridge and a couple of badly dented frets.)
You don't see many Zerberus around. The super exotic ones are pricey and in recent years he's doing a lot with thin stone tops of onyx & other semiprecious stones. He also has a newer eco-friendly line made from pressure treated bamboo.
I'd only recently fallen in love with his Blood Dragon, though it was well out of my price range. Check this one out:
TCE63
Ambassador of the Northern Lights
Looks great
The price you got for the Chimaira is fantastic !
Was looking at Reverb and there is a new one, much higher priced
My last one - Zerberus-Guitars Chimaira in Black-Smoke-Burst versatile working-horse brandnew | Reverb
....just a guitar - so what?You are wrong - this Zerberus-Guitars Chimaira is not just a guitar as much as a Lamborghini Diablo is not just a car.The Chimaira we are talking about was made mostly in handycraft in a small batch of only 40 pcs. worldwide.This guitar might become a very valuable col...
reverb.com
OP
eclecticsynergy
Ambassador of Electric Synergy
Yep, one Chimaira prototype went to the 2012 NAMM convention, and the production run was limited to forty guitars.
I like the Wilkinson trem; have one on another guitar. Smooth & stable, and it's far less of a pain to change strings and do setups on the Wilks than on my Floyd Roses.
There's actually a trem bridge that I like even better: MannMade sells PRS-type trems for Strats, there's one to fit US guitars and another for imports.
I've been a huge fan of the PRS vibrato for decades. Super smooth and controllable, excellent tone, great sustain, and rock solid tuning.
MannMade isn't cheap - they were around $150 last time I bought one, probably a bit more today. But a Callaham or a Babicz would cost you just as much. The new Vega twin-blade trems are up around $270. It's a pretty design but that's way expensive. And they have limited room for intonation adjustment.
OP
eclecticsynergy
Ambassador of Electric Synergy
Here's Frank Scheucher, the builder, doing a demo of the Chimaira.
OP
eclecticsynergy
Ambassador of Electric Synergy
GC had listed mine as different model, the Hydra, which sold for around $1200 new. Hydras are pretty cool in their own right.Looks great
The price you got for the Chimaira is fantastic !
Was looking at Reverb and there is a new one, much higher priced
My last one - Zerberus-Guitars Chimaira in Black-Smoke-Burst versatile working-horse brandnew | Reverb
....just a guitar - so what?You are wrong - this Zerberus-Guitars Chimaira is not just a guitar as much as a Lamborghini Diablo is not just a car.The Chimaira we are talking about was made mostly in handycraft in a small batch of only 40 pcs. worldwide.This guitar might become a very valuable col...
There's a used one for sale on Reverb for $799.
Zerberus Hydra Gold Burst | Reverb
A really interesting guitar coming all the way from Germany, the Zerberus Hydra is a fine example of exceptional craftsmanship and execution. Sporting the gorgeous Gold Burst finish on a Flame Maple Top, this guitar not only looks fantastic but it is super versatile. Although it only has two pick...
reverb.com
syscokid
Ambassador of War & Peace
Right place at the right time! That is an amazing deal... WOW
Amp Mad Scientist
Ambassador of Heresy
Close up of the roller nut, so I can pant over it?
OP
eclecticsynergy
Ambassador of Electric Synergy
OP
eclecticsynergy
Ambassador of Electric Synergy
It's here!Nice and clean, plays great. Trem is cool. I'd worried about the weight but it isn't heavy, just under 8lbs.
It is the Fire Burst finish, so pretty close to a tobacco burst. No Gibson-style teardrop though, the brown is a narrow border around around the edge. Will wait for a sunny day to take my usual chair pic.
There are a couple of tiny scratches but no dings that I noticed. One minor flaw in the finish work; like a PRS this has natural maple instead of plastic binding, and there's a spot where they masked it off a little wider than the thickness of the maple cap so you see a millimeter of natural korina alongside.
Neck plays well and feels good for me, not too shallow. I have fairly long fingers and the typical shredstick necks are too thin to feel right for me.
AmpMadScientist, I haven't measured the nut width but it isn't overly narrow like my Albert Lee; I'd say it's standard Fender width.
Not sure the pickups suit me; they're pretty much metal-oriented - hot, tight quad rails. A bit stiff in character, actually. I'm an alnico guy and never loved ceramic mags. Have kept only two, the Duncan Custom and the Railhammer Chisel bridge. On these quads even the splits are pretty strong. They are full humbucking even when split, but I'd prefer a true singlecoil split tone with pluck & chime despite the noise.
I'll give the factory pickups some time of course; haven't even played the guitar loud yet. It remains to be seen how well it comes alive at volume.
Still, it's nice and lively in the hand and with korina body & long tenon neck I expect it to be pretty interactive.
It's going to be a keeper. So it's going to need a name. But I need to get to know it better first.
With this in the stable, I may sell my Fender Showmaster and maybe the Washburn Maverick. The Chimaira occupies pretty much the same space functionally as the Albert Lee HH as well. But I like that one too much to part with it - even though the neck is small, it's just too sweet to sell.
OP
eclecticsynergy
Ambassador of Electric Synergy
Two humbucker baseplates, but each mounts a pair of dual-rail singlecoil-sized humbuckers so it has full noise rejection even when split. They are denser and more congested than true singlecoils in split mode, and the full series mode is downright massive.Cool update, electicsynergy...
I really want to more about that guitars nut. Hopefully some pics will resolve this. Plus I have no clue on what's going on in the Pickup Department... Are there 4 separate pups in there?
One of my personal preferences is that I don't want huge differences in output from one guitar to another. This goes back to the days when I was often switching guitars mid-set. I've always tried to avoid needing to redial my rig to suit each particular guitar, so I gravitated towards settings that worked well with anything from vintage output singlecoils to medium output humbuckers.
I wound up with a setup that gives me nice gain textures and enough sustain to suit me, while still showing the individual character of each instrument to best advantage. It allows the different guitars to sound like themselves - as long as they fall within a certain range in terms of output.
But hot, metal-style pickups like these quad rails (or something like the Duncan Distortion set) are outside my comfort zone and would require tweaking gain and tone controls. Even a JB is a tad hot for me.
It isn't loudness alone, but also the fact that high output pickups typically don't clean up very well when you roll back the guitar's volume control.
Volume knob cleanup is very important to me, in drive pedals and amp circuits as well as guitar pickups. If there's one link in the signal path that doesn't clean up well and respond well to playing dynamics and fingertouch, it adversely affects the feel for me.
syscokid
Ambassador of War & Peace
I'm a big fan of the guitar volume-knob-cleanup technique...
