So my Sweptwing arrived at the Rat Cave on Thursday, which gave me just enough time to give it a little play before Lava Rat practice at 8:00. While I am still trying to tweak it out a bit, here's what I've noticed so far:

The high points:
- The neck is nice, very smooth, not too wide, and fairly "shallow".
- The guitar seems VERY resonant, almost too much so at times.
- They've done a great job in keeping a well-balanced guitar with the peculiar body shape. I never found the butt end to sag at all, or to feel like the instrument was being pulled one way or the other.
- The bridge and tailpiece are smooooooth - it's a bit more sensitive than my Mosrite, and the arm seems to stay higher off the body. If you're coming to this bridge from a JM/Jag bridge, it will take a goodly amount of getting used to.

The not-so high points:
- The Pickups - I just can't really get a balance on these things. Mind you, I am still tinkering with pickup heights and all that, but they seem a bit inconsistent, and it's a bit difficult to dial in the sound I'm looking for at this point.
- Effect compatibiltiy -- my overdrive sounded pretty gnarly with this guitar, and it's a setting I basically never move, so from my Fenders and Danelectros to my Mosrite, it's the sound I want.

Factors:
1) I haven't had a chance to REALLY set this up and get the PUPs adjusted to a nominal height.
2) Strings - these come equipped with GHS Boomers, which I personally think are poop. I know some of y'all out there use them, but I speak from my personal taste and say that I just can't use those gnarly little monkies. I usually use either Rotosounds or Chromes. I am actually thinking some flats might mellow out this beast a bit.

As a result of pickup height issues, and the strings on there, I just found the overall tone of the guitar to be a bit lacking, but I'm certainly not about to sell this thing off. I will not, however, be bringing it out to our show on Sunday either. It shows a great deal of promise, and like I said, the playability is quite nice. With a little work, it could become one hell of a surf guitar, but as of today, it's still about 4th or 5th in the rotation behind the Mosrite and my Fender stuff.
Granted, if I didn't have the guitars that I do have, I'd probably be singing its praises to the mountaintops, but with the guitars I am used to playing, this one just will need a bit more time to get "that" sound.

~B~

notfamiliar with this guitar. have you got a pix of one?

Surfdaddy,
Just follow the link...

www.hallmarkguitars.com

Jake, how can you say you don't like the 25.5 scale length, and then mention aobut your Jazzmaster, which has a 25.5 scale length itself?

~B~

WR
he's saying "I have very strong opinons, but Im open for trying new things and testing my presumptions."

Either that or he's unaware of the Jazzmaster's scale length and is in for a nasty surprise!

<img src="klzzwxh:0000"></img>

JakeDobner
And from all my baseball playing in the day I have appeared to fuse my fretting hand index finger into place so that it doesn't move to the side anymore.

Jake,
I hear you on that one. My left hand isn't quite so bad, but on the "ball" of my hand (basically the part of my palm in front of the knuckle) at the index finger has all this spare cartilage kinda just chilling there from taking countless fastballs from my days of playing catcher. Luckily it doesn't affect my playing too much. If anything, the only lingering effect that baseball had on my guitar career was when I took a screwball in the hand - my pinkie knuckle hasn't been the same since, and I think that was something like 11 years back at this point.

~B~

Wannes,
I would classify the neck as being more of a flat neck than the baseballbat style (you're talking like a tele neck, right?).

I haven't found any info on the radius, but if someone could tell me how to calculate it, I'd gladly do so. I've got quite a bevvy of tools down on the workbench, and always love to get the chance to put them to use.

~B~

:ot:, I know. So sue me.

Same here, man. I coached my school's JV team last year, and had a blast doing it.

Thing is, I want to find a league to get into, and I don't think I'm quite old enough to start succumbing to softball yet.

~B~

I'd classify this one somewhere between my Jag and my Jazzmaster. I don't know if it's just mine, but every time I play my JM it just feels like it has a big neck to me. I don't know that it's really very different from any other of my guitars, but something about it feels bigger. Might be the depth of the neck - I remember it being more of a deep "U" shape than the shallower "C" shape.

Of course, I'm a Mosrite guy, so I guess my reference for a neck is some sort of lower-case letter.

~B~

Hey Bill - you could google "neck radius gauge" - Then print out the gauge, cut it out, and check the radius of the Hallmark neck - or you could get out your protractor, and make your own -

Did you get this guitar through the Surf Guitar 101 hook-up?

Chris

"You can't tell where you're going if you don't know where you've been"

weird that they don 't have that info on the site though.

I saw they also sell that ultra-cool tremolo tailpiece separatly. cool for home-builders. does it need routing or is it screw-on-top?

WR

Rules to live by #314:
"When in Italy, if the menu says something's grilled, don't assume it is."

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