Terry C McInturff Custom Empress electric guitar review....Check this out!

Описание: Terry C. McInturff Guitars..What's so special about TCM Guitars? Everything!!!
Terry completed his first electric guitar build in Jan. 1978. He started his luthier career by repairing and modifying guitars soon starting to build guitars for players including Eric Clapton, Jimmy Page, Brad Whitford, Dave Hildalgo and others. Terry started working for Hamer USA Guitars around 1988 making custom one-off guitars for some of the high profile endorsed Artists. In 1996 Terry made up some prototypes of his personal designs and chose to concentrate on his preferred 25 1/8" scale length....which sits right in the middle of the two giants in the guitar making world... 24 3/4" and 25 1/2". At first the intent was to create a guitar that could morph between the two main sounds... single coil vs humbucker, along with that middle ground scale length things clicked. Starting with four models in 1997, the Monarch, the Empress, the Glory, and the Zodiac. These shared his slightly off-set body design and the hybrid guitar ideas, trying to hit on a guitar that could do anything a player could ask of it in terms of sound and playability. He struck gold! The electric guitar world welcomed these with rave reviews and being featured as Cover Art on magazines like Guitar Player.

The guitar in this review was custom ordered in mid 1999 and completed in November 1999. I chose the Empress as the base to build my dream guitar from. The stock design was almost perfect for me as it was, but I chose to upgrade to the AAAAA Grade Quilted Maple Top and matching headstock, and to get the pick-up combinations that I love the most (pick-up combinations... of both single coil and humbuckers). The neck was his standard hand carved solid Honduran Mahogany neck with dual actio stell trus rod and his own Graphite reienforement system to help give an amazingly stable neck. The set neck features his mortise and tenoned joint for maximum strength and precision. His beautiful headstock design has a shallow 9 degree headstock angle and almost straight string pull through the beautifully crafted nut. I went for a HSH pick-up configuration, and talked with Terry about a custom wiring plan to achieve my goal, using what he called the "Monster Switch". I went with the Faded Amber Burst with a "dark" outer part of the fade. The standard he used for the back was the Transparent Red Cherry. He uses a Vintage style Nitrocellulose finish on all of his guitars during this era of his production guitars, All of his models included a solid Honduran Mahogany body. The Empress started to get into a figured Maple deep dish carved top...some were bookmatched, some were solid one piece tops. The pick-ups were all designed by Terry to work with the tone woods that he was selecting and bring out the best sound that he could produce when focusing on the finished product. Many models were offered in a choice of bridges between a custom designed tremolo system made to his specs through Mann Made USA that he called the "TCM Vibe Bridge" and it was an excellent working trem! I chose to go with the fully adjustable stop tail bridge, already having a wonderful guitar with a beautifully operating trem. I went with Grover tuning machines. The control layout is simple but powerful. A Master Volume, a Master tone, a 5 position custom blade switch that is custom wired for my favorite pickup combinations. Neck humbucker, slit coil neck humbucker and middle single coil, both humbuckers combined, bridge split humbucker and middle single coil, and the Bridge humbucker alone.... Loud and Proud!
This is a super comfortable guitar to play... with amazing tonal versatility, and ultra stability.

Terry is now making more of the "Single Cut" style of guitars in both a flat top or deep dish carved top. All are more along the Custom realm.

A truly fantastic guitar builder.... I feel very fortunate to call this beauty my own. I love it a LOT!

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