Before I received this guitar from somebody in Hawaii I had never heard of Raines guitars. The eBay listing didn’t mention a brand name and the headstock logo is impossible to read unless you are really close. After I had fiddled around with the Schecter Blackjack 7 for a while and had fallen in love with the Giannini 7 string classical, I was looking for a seven string guitar I could play on my trio jazz gigs. While the Blackjack 7 is a great instrument the one thing that makes it hard for me to use is the narrow fingerboard. Well, then I saw this one on eBay, the neck measurements were a bit wider and the price was right – what could go wrong?
It turned out pretty much everything was wrong with it.
- The output jack didn’t work right out of the box, although that was quickly fixed
- The neck seemed to be a little warped towards the body and the high E string didn’t produce a sound beyond the 14th fret
- The fretwork was very uneven. Some of the fretwires stuck out on the side cutting into fingers
- This thing is neck heavy. While the other (un)features could be only on this particular guitar, the imbalance was clearly design flaw of this model line. Didn’t they ever pick these up in the factory and play them? Of course it’s a relatively small body and the big headstock with extra tuner adds weight. At first I thought I had to send it back. Then I did web searches and emailed friends with luthier-ing experience only to find out that maybe I should just wear a non-slippery shirt and a wide strap. After a while I tried to balance the guitar with a water bottle dangling from the bottom strap pin. It needed about a half liter of water to make this thing hang like it should. It also looked pretty stupid. Then I thought about inserting a 500g tubular piece of lead into a drilled hole in the solid middle section of the body – this would be about a pencil sized piece. After numerous people recommended not dealing with molten lead, further inquiries resulted in the recommendation to use tungsten, which is almost as heavy as lead. But a lot more expensive. So far I haven’t done anything. Maybe I am getting used to it.
- Maybe only a matter of personal preference, but this guitar doesn’t come with a pick guard. Since I do still use a pick sometimes and I am used to anchor my pinky on the pick guard I had to fabricate something. But then that added a certain personal touch – although I have taken the custom pick guard off recently and don’t miss it much.
- And lastly, this guitar also has a problem with staying in tune. Even though it has lock-down tuners (you thread the end of the string through a hole in the tuner and then tighten a screw to keep the string from slipping out.) Luckily it’s mainly only the G-string.
The funny part is that I absolutely love this instrument! I play it on pretty much every electric guitar gig where I don’t need synth access. To me it has a very bluesy tone. And it is not as easy to play as the Godin LGX and that slows me down and maybe even makes me play more musical.
To Mr. Raines’ credit (yes, there is a Matt Raines who has these things built somewhere overseas) he promptly answered my first email inquiry and readily admitted that this production run hadn’t quite turned out as expected. He also offered me one of his brand-new models at a great discount. I like that kind of directness.