I love my Schecter Omen 6. There are many reasons for that. The most important reason is that this is the guitar my wife convinced me to buy (in a way that I’ll explain soon). Up until I purchased this guitar I had always researched my next guitar online in great detail. Not this time though. This time I knew I wanted another guitar, I just didn’t know what it was that I wanted. So I went to a local guitar store with the intention of researching what else was out there. That day I not only decided, I purchased.
While visiting my local Billy Hyde’s guitar store (which is sadly no longer around) I played a few different guitars ranging from Fender and Squier to Jackson and Schecter. To be honest I wasn’t overly familiar with Schecter guitars. What I discovered straight away though was how incredibly easy they were to play. From an aesthetic point of view I was instantly drawn to the Omen 6. It was black and white (my favourite colour combination on a guitar) and it just looked amazing.
I’m a big fan of a well designed guitar. Obviously playability, tone and comfort are the major factors, but when a guitar has a well designed headstock, beautifully designed string-through-body eyelets and recessed volume/tone controls … Well I get excited. When a guitar also plays like a dream and sounds amazing, then that is the icing on the lactose free cake. I need to remember my dietary requirements even when getting excited by a guitar.
To this day I remain amazed by how well this guitar plays. I can still remember being blown away on the day I discovered this guitar. I asked the guitar store assistant if this guitar had been setup by someone in the store and he said “Nope”. Schecter guitars just seem to come that way (later evidenced when I noticed the sticker on the control panel cover on the back of the guitar that says Set up to play by Schecter Australia). So cool.
From memory the guitar was around $400 AUD new. I had never played a guitar this good for such a price. I was confused and excited. I was tempted, but hesitant. So I phoned my wife.
As I mentioned at the beginning of this article, my wife convinced me to buy this guitar. She tolerates my guitar fetish, but does not understand it. When I phoned and explained the guitar I had played (expressing my limited knowledge of the Schecter brand) she simply said “Don’t focus on the brands you know of, focus on whether you liked it and it played nicely.”
Knowing my wife she would have said something more along the lines of “I don’t know how it’s supposed to play. If it plays like a guitar should and is within your budget, just buy it”.
I don’t believe I’d ever had to not defend a guitar purchase before. This was clearly a sign. Needless to say, I bought the guitar then and there. What makes this story that little bit more interesting to me was that I was doing this research/shopping on my lunch break. So for my colleagues I had gone out to lunch and come back with a guitar. Seemed normal I’m sure.
Years later and this guitar is still with me. I hope to never part with a guitar again. I’d just like to add to the collection as years go by.
The Schecter Omen 6 story is likely to develop further though as this guitar is the one I’m most likely to add my Dialtone Pickups to one day. I’ve pre-ordered my two pickups and as soon as they’re ready I will be installing them into this guitar. If that goes as well as I hope it will, this guitar could once again become one of my favourite guitars. Either way I’m hoping it’s not my last Schecter guitar. These things seem to seriously rock.