In the 1970’s a little company by the name of Schecter Guitar Research was commissioned to build a special guitar for none other than Pete Townshend of The Who. Pete quickly fell in love with the guitar and the rest is history. Fast forward to today, and Schecter is one of the largest manufacturers of guitars in the world. Of course, the Schecter PT remains.

Today, we’ll be looking at one of the modern PT guitars, the Schecter Hellraiser Hybrid PT-7.

Features:

– Mahogany Body w/ Carbon Fiber Multi-Play Binding

– Ultra Violet Finish

– Arched Top

– 3-pc Maple Set Neck w/ Carbon Fiber Reinforcement Rods

– 26.5” Ebony Fretboard

– 12”-16” Compund Radius

– 24 X-Jumbo Frets

– EMG 57/66 Active Pickups

– Hipshot Hardtail Bridge w/ String Thru Body

– 1xVol/1xTone/3-way Switch

The Schecter “Hellraiser” series contains a huge range of electric guitars, electric basses, and even acoustics. The “Hybrid” series takes the classic “Hellraiser” design and adds some modern and innovative twists.

The highlight of this guitar’s features is it’s comfort to play. The contours hug the player well and the guitar is comfortable to play standing or sitting. The smooth ultra access cutaway makes soloing in the higher register a breeze and I never found my hand to be hitting the body.

The addition of the Hipshot bridge is always welcome as well. There is a reason it made it to our Top 4 Hardtail Bridges list!

The thin neck really makes my life easier on a 7-string. I don’t have big hands, so it allows me to adjust a bit easier to the extra string.

I love compound radius designs. Schecter totally nails it on this one. Compound radius means that the neck is chunkier on the low-end and a bit flatter on the upper end. It allows for more neck to grab onto for rhythm playing, but effortless soloing on the high end.

If you want to learn more about fretboard radius, check out our article, “Does Fretboard Radius Matter?”.

Visually, the finish is really neat. The Ultra Violet color has a nice shine and almost seems to change colors in light. It’s worth noting that this guitar is also offered in a quilted maple top with a clear black stain.

Tone:

 The guitar body is solid mahogany and as such has a ton of warmth and sustain. Solid Mahogany is often noted as heaving a flubby low end, but the maple neck helps to balance this out a bit.

The Set Neck construction gives the guitar even more warmth and beefiness as well. While it doesn’t have as much attack as a bolt-on, or as much sustain as a neck thru, the set neck offers some of the biggest low end possible, which is really nice for a 7-string.

The EMG 57 bridge pickup is definitely hot, but not quite as hot as the infamous EMG 81.

It definitely excels for modern metal sounds. The unique combo of Alnico 5 and Steel Pole Pieces make for an almost PAF-style quality.

Now, I found that the pickups in this guitar do crystal cleans surprisingly well. They do break up fairly easily when exposed to a bit of gain. Because of this, crunchy vintage sounds are sort of difficult to get out of these pickups.

Overall, the tone is upper-mid heavy well a big low end. The active pickups add some extra head room and punch for high gain playing, as well as aid in allowing your lead playing to cut through the mix.

Build Quality:

 This guitar was definitely well above-par, but not perfect.

The best part of it was the neck. It felt super solid, and it held tuning exceptionally well (even down in drop G#), which is partially due to the carbon fiber reinforcement rods in the neck.

All of the hardware was well mounted, and the Hipshot bridge was obviously comfortable to play on.

The frets unfortunately had a few dings in them. All of the fret ends were great, but I found 2 small dings in the frets. Although, it could have happened in shipping or after production.

Final Verdict:

 Overall, the Schecter Hellraiser Hybrid PT-7 is a solid instrument.

Great tone for metal, really comfortable to play, super cool visual appointments, and solid craftsmanship.

If you’re looking to order one, we offer our Free Guitar Enhancement Package, as well as our expert quality check. So, you’ll know that you’re guitar will be a perfect specimen, free of any issues, such as dinged frets.

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This article was written by Zac Buras, our editor located in Louisiana.

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