Photo: Floyd Rose Redmond Model 4.
A revolutionary Speedloader tremolo: change your strings faster than you ever dreamed! I'm impressed by the power of this guitar. Admittedly, the price is for well-off musicians, but as you will see throughout this review, the instrument is absolutely amazing. Many guitar-making companies add design or electronic features that set their guitars apart, but often (not always) these new "gadgets" added to a guitar are actually of little use, or serve commercial rather than musical purposes.
In the case of this gem (I'm not afraid to call it that), we come across a truly revolutionary system (Floyd Rose's Speedloader system) that is undoubtedly a major advance in comfort for any guitarist.
Design, neck and... tuners?
I can't start anywhere else: the guitar has no tuners. An attractive Floyd Rose design with a cutout in the headstock is all this part does, since the system for tuning and holding the strings is not at all conventional. We'll talk about that when we get to the bridge.
As for the design, the guitar offers a Stratocaster look with somewhat sharper horns, in a good finish, which on this particular model is a 3-tone sunburst.
On its maple neck sits a comfortable, smooth and perfectly balanced fretboard (maple or rosewood). At first I thought that perhaps the rather "hefty" price might be partly due to the Speedloader revolution, but I'm pleased to find that the balance of all the components and the quality of the instrument back it up. For my taste, the gauge of the chosen strings (Floyd Rose, specially designed for this guitar) is perfect, even though they come in .008, .009, .010 and .011. Perfect because they have body, punch and powerful definition without the slightest fret buzz, and a smooth feel. I think this is very important, since when playing fast runs, and even more so if you use techniques such as bends, playing a stiff guitar is especially unpleasant.
The pickups and the bridge
As for pickups, we find three Floyd Rose single coils. We'll talk about the sound a little further down.
The tremolo is a floating Floyd Rose Speedloader. One more element that makes this a truly luxurious guitar. For one thing, if you look closely at the photos, you'll see that the string "anchoring" system is completely new: a string cut to "bridge/nut" length with metal ends on both the bridge side and the nut side. This feature makes changing strings radically more convenient than on any other guitar. We won't have to cut, tie or give the tuning peg a tedious number of turns until it grips and reaches tension. It's as simple as seating the metal end at the nut and at the bridge, and off you go. Another advantage of this system is tuning reliability (especially with freshly installed strings), since it avoids the accumulated windings on each tuning peg that, at any given moment, can lose a bit of tension. It's a real treat to change the strings, have the instrument much closer to correct tuning from the start and give the tremolo all the abuse in the world without losing a micron of tuning.
In addition to these new "weapons," the tremolo's performance while playing is amazing. Smoothness, precision, comfort... I'm definitely delighted with this guitar.
Its sound
What good would a great invention and a great bridge be if the guitar didn't sound good? This doesn't seem to be a problem. Through the five-way selector we go through a range of sounds that lean toward sharp, bright tones with a Strat flavor. I think the instrument's sonic resources are equally powerful, since it combines that attack or verve with "thick" body and definition. For example, if you pull on the fourth string (or another) looking for a "slap" effect in a phrase, you fully feel the punch, with body and brightness at the same time. For me it's a perfect range of sounds, although it doesn't exactly have the darkness of a "battle-ready" humbucker, if that's what you're looking for.
I've demanded a multitude of sounds in my phrases, looking for harmonics or a "slap" attack, and the result was extreme ease in getting everything I wanted without any effort.
Conclusions
The guitar is absolutely powerful and borders on perfection in tuning, intonation, sound, tremolo and, of course, the addition of this "magic" string-changing system. Its price is not one all of us can reach, since 2,600 euros is an amount that takes a lot of gigs (without spending it on beer afterward), but it's a definitive instrument for live and studio use. If I have to find faults, so you don't accuse me of "passion or love at first sight," I could, being picky, complain about its single volume control. What about tone? We can't adjust the tonal color. Although honestly, the sounds, just as they come out across the selector's five positions, are perfectly valid for almost any kind of playing. Personally, I prefer simple guitars, without too many complications, that just sound good, although a tone control never strikes me as superfluous. As a final conclusion, my congratulations to the mind that devised this guitar and to the whole team that makes it possible for it to be in my hands, or yours in the near future.
