Front of Washburn MG600F Body
Features are as follows: Carvin AP11 single coil in the neck position, Carvin AP11R in the middle position, and the standard Washburn (made by Seymour Duncan) with coil tap in the bridge position. The tone control is a pull-up switch for coil tap feature. The coil selector is a 5-way switch which has been absolutely dead quiet and positive in its action. The body is basswood with a flamed maple top, the neck is maple, and the fingerboard is ebony. It has jumbo frets. The tremolo is a Wilkinson variant, but it is a Japanese made part. The newest addition is a GraphTech F.A.A.S. acoustic pickup system. Controls shown above include all of the original magnetic controls plus an independent volume control for the acoustic pickups plus an EQ switch to round out the tone when used with guitar amps instead of acoustic amps. The other switch drives whichever pickup is deselected (magnetic or piezo) to ground so the signal is pure from the selected pickup. The middle position selects both magnetic and piezo and the amout of blend is controlled by each individual volume pot. The piezo is active and a preamp is a part of the package. It also compensates for inductive and capacitive loads so blend is seamless. The output jack is a special switched unit which senses whether the cable plug is engaged and ONLY when the cable is plugged in will it power the preamp with the 9v battery. I routed the body to house the battery and where the additional room was needed for the extra. You cannot tell any difference from the back though. Also, the system can be used in either monaural output with all of the blend features or you can use a stereo "Y" adapter to 2 monaural cables to separate the acoustic and magnetic pickup signals to separate amps! The versatility of this system is unparalleled! Fishman could not provide either all of these features or even a pickup system that would fit my unique bridge. Seems that GraphTech has really got its act together! Contact them directly as I believe Stew-Mac doesn't have this upgraded system and preamp yet. Mine is essentially a Beta test unit. I am entirely delighted! It is strung neck-through-body just as the stock saddles were. The piezo saddles, by the way, are made using GraphTech's "String Saver" saddles. The extra pot knob was where the blend pot was used with the old system. It is now just filling the extra hole. Below is a close-up of the FAAS transducer saddles.
Rear of Washburn Body
This rear view shows the electronics' covers and the access for the string-through bridge. You can also see the bolt-on neck cover and good detail work. It is USA made (even if the trem is a non-standard size Japanese designed and built unit...)
Washburn M600F Samples.
Above and below are the Washburn's maple neck and ebony fingerboard. The neck is very narrow and fast. Action is amazingly low and the neck has been extremely stable for such low action. I really like the offset fret dots... If Carvin could do them this way as an option, I think it would look really cool. I don't get to play very often, so I tend to rely on sight for some orientation on the fingerboard, and the offset fret inlay dots are actually quite helpful as they are easier to "spot"... pun intended! I have installed an Earvana compensating nut and intonation is about as perfect as it gets. I have recorded 2 CDs using this guitar. The rear view of the neck shows its shape and also the tuners which seem to work pretty well. The view is shown below.
And now for a sound clip... I recorded it in an alternate tuning into the Korg and into the sound card. My sound card seemed really sensitive to input level. I think that impedences were mis-matched. It got worse with the Yamaha's thinline as I couldn't attenuate it properly. The samples were recorded several years ago. Even the microphone I used wasn't real happy, but as I said before, I was new at this at the time it was recorded. Any music loaded from here should be treated as copyrighted!!! Thanks.