Plugging In
Playing the Schroeder Edge Doublecut was
a pleasure. The C-shaped neck fit my hand
quite comfortably, and the tightness of the
wood grain made it feel silky despite its lack
of gloss. The high, round frets felt smooth
and evenly finished. As one who primarily
plays Fender instruments, I felt quite at home
with the Schroeder’s 25" scale. The 1.70" nut
allowed me to fret chords without cramping
my fingers. The action was extremely low
and even. Though the setup would work well
for shredding and players who favor gain, I
found the sixth and fifth strings tended to die
too quickly when I played clean single notes.
Loosening the strings, I turned the two large
screws that anchor the wraparound bridge,
raising it enough to let the bass strings ring to
my liking. This particular stop tailpiece bridge
offers individual string intonation, but not individual
saddle height adjustment. Fortunately,
the bridge arc seems to correspond perfectly
to the neck’s flattish radius. Two setscrews let
you move the entire bridge back and forth for
gross intonation adjustment, should you radically
change the string gauge.
To cover the range of sounds Schroeder
needed for his gig, he decided to use
three Seymour Duncan P-Rail pickups and a
surprisingly intuitive switching system. The
P-Rails are a unique design that fits a bladestyle
single-coil and a P-90-based pickup
into a humbucker-sized mounting. The
single-coil and the P-90 can be used individually
or combined to create a humbucker
sound. The pickup-selector system uses
a 6-position rotary switch, replacing what
would ordinarily be the tone control. This
allowed me to choose: neck, neck + middle,
neck + bridge, middle, bridge + middle, or
bridge. A 3-way switch selects either singlecoil,
P-90, or humbucker mode for all three
pickups at once.
Running the Schroeder into an Egnater
Rebel 30, an Orange Tiny Terror, and an
Electro-Harmonix 44 Magnum, I found plenty
of usable tones. The switching seemed
complicated at first, but I was amazed at
how quickly it felt natural and I was soon
able to grab any combination I sought
with hardly any thought. That said, using
three pickups like this involves a certain
amount of sonic compromise. When people
talk about Knopfler-style “out-of-phase”
sounds, whether they know it or not, they
are referring to string phasing—not electronic
phasing. That sound is created by
picking up string vibration at two different
points along its wave and the phase cancellation
that results.
The sound of each individual pickup is
affected by its location between the neck
and the bridge. On the Edge Doublecut’s
bridge pickup, the P-90 coil is closest to
the bridge, and selecting it yields an almost
Telecaster-like sound. The single-coil in the
bridge is farther away than one would normally
place it, resulting in a darker, more
hollow sound. Those two pickup options
in the middle position hewed closer to traditional
guitars. The neck P-90 sound was
vintage, but because the single-coil was further
from the fretboard than on a Strat, it
delivered a brighter sound than you might
expect from a neck-position pickup.
When you start combining pickups, sounds
get more complex as string phasing comes
into play, so I was surprised that those
sounds were largely quite familiar, save for
the single-coil bridge and neck combo,
which proved more out-of-phase sounding
than Tele-like. Creating a humbucker from
two single-coils never results in an airy, PAF
tone, and the Edge is no exception. These
dark humbucker sounds are perfectly suitable
for driving bright, high-gain amps, but
for clean tones and mildly overdriven ones
I would personally stick to the Edge’s other
switching options.
The Verdict
The Schroeder Edge Doublecut is a beautifully
constructed, highly playable instrument
that’s capable of approximating a Les Paul
(Standard or Junior), a Fender Stratocaster,
or a Telecaster. If some of the sounds aren’t
exact clones, they’re all musical. Also keep
in mind that Schroeder is a custom builder.
This is the guitar that suits his needs, and
he is more than capable of building an
instrument that fits yours.
Buy if...
you want a beautifully built, great-playing, sonic Swiss Army knife.
Skip if...
sound-wise, you believe less is more.
Rating...
