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Ah, thanks. Semi-holloa, . I already have a schecter omen 7. Just can't get the tone out of solid bodies.
Originally Posted by Mick-7
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06-04-2025 06:43 AM
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That must be it. Still can't get through. I wonder why that's happening?
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If you mean my LP7, it’s a solid body - no f holes and no chambers. At 10.5 pounds, it’s the Mister T of guitars, and I’ve been doing radical things to it for 30 years. I filled the bridge rout, plugged the extra control holes, added a Tusq nut and good tuners, and fitted an EMG in the neck position. It’s now a poor man’s Benny 7 - it sounds great and plays incredibly well. But it’s truly becoming a fretless wonder. Originally Posted by voyage
I was planning to take the top down to bare wood and refinish it. But I realized that I didn’t even know if the grain was real or photoflame. So I finished the plugged rout by creating grain with a furniture touch up stick and covering it with vintage tint poly. The poly caused the “grain” to run a bit, so the match isn’t great. And the thick poly that came on the guitar doesn’t lend itself to feathering or blending. But it is what it is, and that would be a beater.
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I think Raines makes smaller bodies.
LA-7 and LA-6 6/7 String Laminated Jazz Guitar — Raines Guitars
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That’s a 16” body. Originally Posted by Woody Sound
A Raines Tele 7 has been my all purpose solid body for about 5 years. From my experience, be careful with Raines. The woodwork is generally excellent, but the hard parts were of very poor quality. The bridge / tailpiece was a crude, cheap chunk that broke an amazing number of strings where they crossed the baseplate emerging from the body. The ferrules were cheap, flimsy plastic that deformed from string pressure and stopped holding the ball ends - they rode up into the deformed plastic lumps and got stuck there. I replaced the bridge / TP with a Hipshot and the ferrules with metal ones.
The nut was loose in the slot and came to rest off center because of the string angles in the slots. It was also poorly cut. When I ordered the guitar from Matt by phone, he told me it would be set up before shipping by its designer - Chris Forshage. From the way it arrived and with the problems that popped up, I have trouble believing that this happened. I smoothed the roughly cut nut bed so the bottom was flat and level, and I fitted a Tusc nut that’s been stable in place since then with a drop of CA gel to help hold it.
The pickups, which Matt told me were Duncans, were cheap Chinese builder units that sold on the web for $25 USD / pair. They pulled so hard on the strings once I set it up for low action that there were intonation and ghost tone problems. The pickups are body mounted in very shallow routs, so there’s no way to drop them. I finally replaced them with Alumitones.
The tuners were said to be Sperzel lockers, and they looked like Sperzels. But they were very stiff, and the E1 broke within a month - a tooth came off the gear on the shaft. I tried to reach Matt several times and got no response, which is interesting since I emailed him that it arrived and seemed fine on my first gig (blues) and got an immediate thank you.
So I called Sperzel to order a replacement, and they knew nothing about Raines guitars. But they immediately offered to replace it, which they did. The new one was properly smooth and felt totally different. A few weeks later, another one did the same thing. So I ordered a set of new ones from Sperzel, and they’ve been fine ever since. I sent one of the broken ones to them, assuming they’d investigate to see if these were knockoffs, but I never heard back from them about it.
I did all of the above myself, and it was very much improved. But it still had a very faint honk to it on some notes. So I took it to Marc Tappan for a proper setup, since I’m not equipped to do SS frets and Marc’s so much better than I am at this. He found a few frets that were very slightly high. When I got it back, it was a different guitar!
I used it last night for jazz in a very crowded stage area. I had to stand wedged in place by a wall behind me, the keyboard in front with amp to my left, and the bass player plus his amp to my right. Our headstocks missed each other by inches several times, and mine was perilously close to the keyboard player’s head. My Quilter BlockDock 10 was on the floor against the wall directly behind me, and I couldn’t even turn around and stoop to adjust the controls without banging my headstock into one or more of the above. It was no place for an archtop, but the Raines held its own very nicely - and no musicians or instruments were harmed.
I can recommend the Raines Tele 7, as long as you’re willing to replace the pickups, tuners, nut, bridge / tailpiece, and ferrules up front and have it set up by an expert. The design is great, the wood is very well made, the neck is great, and it was worth dumping an extra $500 into it because it’s still cheaper than most alternatives. But if I knew all this up front, I’d have bought the same guitar made in Austin by Chris Forshage. He was selling them for $1800 at the time, and I now have about $1300 in it plus my labor. Another lesson learned.
The Vietnamese 7s Jimmy Blue Note recommends are available on Reverb and eBay for about $400. They may well be the best choice for a small 7 string beater. FWIW, they’re not full archtops - they’re semihollow.
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I suspect you will have hard time finding a high quality semi-hollow 7 string, semi-hollow or hollow mandates a bigger body size than you want. Originally Posted by voyage
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