NGD Skervesen Raptor 7 and Cort A5

Jun 26, 2009
1,970
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48
New Jersey
Hey! I got some new goodies in the past month that I figured I'd share. I purchased a Skervesen Raptor 7 String and a Cort A5 5 String bass. I have a teaser photo below and an imgur album for more images. Here's a quick review

Imgur album http://imgur.com/a/vzXw0

Family Photo
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Skervesen Raptor 7
I purchased this guitar from a member of the sevenstring forums. I bought it as a muse to start writing and recording again after a 2 year hiatus. My original choice was a Mayones Regius 7, however the seller I was trying to purchase from was really unsure about selling it. I play on my next guitar purchase to be a Regius 7, even though I love this guitar so much.

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Playability: This guitar plays unlike any guitar I've ever played. The fretboard is so smooth and the stainless steel frets really make a tremendous difference in feel. My last main guitar was my SC607b which is a baritone so I wasn't sure how well I'd adjust to a 25.5", however the transition was seamless. The guitar build is extremely solid and the craftsmanship really shows. My only complaint revolves around it not being a baritone (my hand doesn't have a huge amount of room for picking around the pickups. But I'm also 6'6" with big hands, so it's more of a personal problem).

Sound: This guitar comes with a set of Bareknuckle Juggernauts and SPANKS. The tone doesn't shine so much through amp sims (quick side note: I've noticed while amp sims can do 95% the job of real amps, certain characteristics just don't shine with them) but then I play through my 5150III -> Mesa setup, the chugs are super tight and have a great chug to them. To compare this guitar to my SC607b, it seems my EMG's in my SC607b have a lot of harshness and gross upper frequencies that I've never been able to get rid of no matter how much EQ I use. The bottom end also feels a lot clearer and sounds much more organic. This guitar also has the Skervesen acoustic mod installed. I won't comment much as I don't think it's much to write home about, however it's fun to play around and have more options from the guitar itself when playing with clean tones.


Cort A5 Bass
I purchased this bass yesterday since my Brice bass is a complete piece of shit. It plays really well, however it's so light and the electronics sound like I'm playing through a broken Nokia cell phone. This isn't the standard model, it's the custom spalted maple model.

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Playability: I only got this bass yesterday, but it definitely plays well. It's a pretty heavy bass so the build itself honestly makes it feel way better right out the gate. It's a 34" scale and the neck feels fairly wide, however I have big hands so it honestly makes it more comfortable for me. Something I've noticed with this bass is that it doesn't seem to go out of tune, no matter how hard I play it.

Sound: There are Bartolini MK5CBC-B & MK5CBC-T pups in this bass. I can't compare them to other bass pickups as I don't have an incredible amount of experience with playing all kinds of pups, however I'm definitely happy with these. The DI's are super clean and with the Pro Steels I put on them, it's clank city like I've always wanted. My biggest pet peeve that I have with bass is a flubby high (heaviest) string. I've played different basses from Fender Jazz all the way down to my Brice, and no matter the bass it's always had the muddiest sounding top string for open notes and the first few frets. This bass however has a tight and rich sound even on the top string.

I'll be updating this thread with DI's that you guys can play around with once I put out my new song this week. Thanks for checking this out!