Schecter Hellcat VI

Schecter Hellcat VI in 3 tone sunburst finish, not sure of the year it was manufactured, but it was made in Korea. Bolt on maple neck, rosewood fretboard, solid Alder body, 30" scale, 6 strings tuned EADGBE one octave lower than that of a standard guitar. The string gauges are: (.025 - .035, - .045 .055 -.075 -.095). It has 3 Duncan Design MH-102 mini humbuckers, 5 way pickup switch, 1 tone/coil tap knob and 1 volume knob, Grover tuners, TonePros bridge with brass saddles. No case or gig bag included. It would have been nice to include at least a gig bag, but it's no big deal. For the price, it's features make up for the lack of accessories.

Lots of good tone variations are possible with the Hellcat VI, everything from bright to warm and bassy tones thanks to the coil tap and 5 way pickup switch. Like a previous reviewer stated, playing chords at the lower strings can sound muddy depending on the tone setting, but they sound amazing on the higher strings. Fans of New Order and The Cure should rejoice as this instrument can easily achieve Robert Smith???s distinctive Bass VI tone as well as Peter Hook's melodic lead bass lines.

Fit and Finish on my model was superb and the factory set up was surprisingly good. All I had to do was adjust the intonation of the G string slightly, but otherwise everything else was spot on.

Everything on the instrument appears to be well built. I've played the instrument every several hours each day for the past 3 months that I've owned it and have not detected any flaws in it's playability or it's hardware. These days you get what you pay for, but for the price the Hellcat VI is very well made with the look and feel of more expensive instruments.

I've never had to deal with Schecter so I can't really voice an opinion on their level of customer support.

I've heard some people say it's a limited instrument reserved for specific use. I disagree. I think possibilities for this instrument are limited by your own imagination. It's not exactly a baritone guitar, nor is it anything like a modern 6 string bass, so what is it? Is it a bass? Is it a guitar? You decide. Bass players accustomed to playing conventional 4 5 and 6 string basses may have to get accustomed to it, but guitarists should do just fine. If it were lost or stolen, I'd get another in a heartbeat.

I got mine on ebay and seem to have gotten a weird hybrid - it's the sunburst but has the black neck. go figure. it looks better that way thow so I'm happy. and I really love the sound of it! sounds very curesque. the best and unexpected part is that it really can also be used as a bass. it's a bit strange to play bass on it because the strings are so close together - one can't really go nuts on it - but soundwise it works for me and my homerecordings. so I'll probably sell my bass to make some room cos the schecter can do it all. the only thing I find really ugly is the sunburst pickguard. i would probably chose the black hellcat if i would buy it again.

Features as in other reviews (30", six strings, EADGBE tuning, etc), but I'd like to emphasize that it also has a coil tap, effectively giving you a huge range of sounds. The headstock slants backwards a fair amount. Supposedly this keeps the string tension better, but it does make me feel a wee bit metal somehow.

In the same sphere as the Fender Bass VI and other baritone guitars. I am extremely happy with the sound of this guitar. It straddles a weird grey area between "normal" guitars and basses. It's a baritone (in the original sense: EADGBE tuning). Chords can be a bit muddy at some settings (this is a bass for pete's sake), but can be pretty clear with the right tonal settings. Some friends (who own the original and reissue Fender VI) were amazed by this guitar, even stating that it does a better fender baritone than the RI and certainly better than the jaguar baritone. Go figure.

It came set up perfectly. Shiny Black. Great action, great feel. There is a tiny lacquer drip by the nut on the neck.

I've had it about six months of sporadic playing. It goes out of tune only with the changing of seasons.

never had to deal with them.

OK. I freaked out with the last batch of Cure reissues (Faith, 17 secs, pornography). I almost traded for a Fender VI RI but the deal fell through. So I looked long and hard for something that would do the dark, deep guitar sound. I'm extremely happy with the sound of the guitar, with its looks, and how it plays. For the price these are going for (usually around 550) I can't complain at all. It does the cure thing. It can do the Peter Hook thing. Although it will never be as collectible as the fender stuff (VI, Jaguar baritone) it is a much better value to start with and an equivalent guitar. The Danelectro baritones are going for 300-400 now and for an extra few (well hundred or so) bucks you can get the Schecter and actually buy something that will last (and is made of wood). The one hassle: It isn't easy to find a case that fits well. I just ended up buying a bass case and having some extra space in there. Buy new strings direct from Schecter at some point, although the Fender reissues mean that there are more baritone strings floating around.

2004 Hellcat VI made in Korea, 22 medium frets 6 string EADGBE tuning, solid alder top, volume tone and 5 way switch, 3 duncan MH-102 pickups, maple neck with rosewood, black finish, Jaguar shape, TonePro hard tail, sealed Grover tuners, 30" short-scale neck with medium frets,no case.

Came with a cheap guitar cable and allen wrenches.

With 3 pickups and coil tapping, the versatility is there. The other reviewer that said you couldn't use it as a regular bass is mistaken. It produces as good a bass tone as any short-scale bass. However, you need to pick a setting that emphasizes the lows to get a reasonable low E. Otherwise the fundamental disappears. So depending on whether you want to play chords or lay down basslines you should play with the 5-way switch and the knobs.

I also think that the tone might improve with flatwound strings. They might help emphasize the fundamentals on the low E and A.

The reason I'm only giving this a 5 is because of the problem with the bridge (see below). Otherwise I'd give it a 9.

I'm not really knocking the entire Hellcat VI line, just this one guitar.

This instrument uses a tonepros tuneomatic style bridge with large brass saddles. The saddles were cut improperly so that he thinner strings sat in as wide a slot as the low E string. The net result is a kind of ringing or mwah sound on the high strings.

I doubt that all Hellcats have this problem, but I also wonder how this could be a one of issue and how many people aren't noticing it as much because it doesn't sound as prominent through an amp as it does acoustically.

But this was a deal-breaker for me. More on customer service later.

I had no problems with the rest of the fit and finish. There appeared to be a slight scuffmark underneath the finish on the neck but not that noticeable.

It was hard to figure out how well the action was set because of the saddle buzz. But I think most of the buzz originated from the saddles. I raised the action but couldn't get rid of the buzz. I suspect that a good bridge would result in an action that had no fret buzz. The neck appeared to be very straight.

Someone else posted about bad pots. I think they may have changed the pots for 2005 because on mine it has heavy duty metal pots on it that felt very durable.

The tonepros bridge has very thick studs.

The tuners work surprisingly well for this even though they are small guitar tuners. The strings for this are especially made to taper at the ends for this purpose. Because of the short-scale, the tuners don't have to sustain very much string tension.

The only thing that looks cheap is the plastic nut.

I emailed Schecter about the bridge problem and they volunteered to replace it. I was close to taking them up on the offer but my original idea was to put a Graphtech bridge on it and run the signal through the VBass, to kinda cheat with a short-scale bass to try to simulate a P or Jass or other bass tones out of it. This probably would have worked but it would have involved a lot of additional expense.

When I did the math, it made more sense for me to order a custom bass to my exact specifications. What I really wanted was basically a 30" variax bass, a Vbass driver, so to speak, with only a piezo bridge, no mags.

So the idea of returning the bridge when I never really intended on using the bridge long-term seemed like a waste of time.

But Schecter email support has always been easy to deal with and accomodating. Even though it's email, they treat you like a person, not a number.

I wonder how many Schecter is making and for how long they will continue to offer it. I still think it's a very intriguing instrument. I intend on having a custom doubleneck neckthru bass built with the Bass VI on the bottom and an 8-string on top both with a 30.5" scale. (The low E and A at 30" is a little too rubbery for me.) If I didn't want the 8-string I would have gotten the bridge replaced and kept this. Returning this had more to do with me realizing I couldn't hack it on the Stiletto Studio 8 at 34" scale than the Hellcat VI being irredeemable (read my Stiletto Studio 8 review).

I had been researching this thing for many months before I broke down and bought it. There really isn't much info on this on the net. For those of you who were like me before I got it, read this section carefully to help decide whether this is for you!

I treat this as a bass, not a guitar, but I have liberal ideas of what a bass is. It doesn't have to slap and pop and sound like a piano at 36" scale to be a bass. It doesn't need a low F string. It doesn't have to have ultra-wide string spacing. Others may differ.

Remember that Lemmy plays his bass pretty much like a guitar so there are differing schools of thought on how to approach bass.

This is a bass with an extended upper range and extensive chord or lead soloing potential. How you use that is up to you.

When using the upper 4 strings, the open D position is equivalent in frequency range to the bottom 4 strings on a drop-D guitar. So given this, you have a WIDE range of useful chords before it gets too muddy. You can play it like a baritone guitar and just at a slightly higher position, reserving the low stuff for basslines. With 22 frets there is plenty of room to go up the neck and because the frets are a little father apart than on a guitar, it's still pretty easy to fret 3-finger chords at around the 12th to 15th position.


Because of the ultra-short scale, with the frets closer together than a regular bass and with the lower string tension you can form barre chords fairly well on it. You can apply most guitar-like techniques to it. Vibrato is easy. 1/4 step bends are easy even in the 1st position. 1/2 step bends are doable but require more effort on the thinner strings since these appear to be tighter than the low E and A. Full step bends are doable at around the 12th fret. For someone with considerable finger strength you could really lay down some guitar-like solos on it.

I also wonder whether it might be possible to install a bigsby vibrato on it.

You can also do alternate tunings on it, like instead of EADGBE you could go EADGCF so the intervals between strings are all equal. With more open strings comes plenty of different riffs and techniques you could employ using the open strings vs. a regular 4-string bass.
It's not that good trying to play fingerstyle, but for a guitarist who wants to lay down basslines, play it with a pick and you really don't have to exert much effort.

I really think this is the ultimate bass for guitarists in a home studio situation. It's for the guitarist who wondered why basses couldn't just be guitars tuned an octave lower. The other one out there that has gotten some press is the OLP MM5 which is a lot cheaper than this one, and of course the Danelectros that are all over Ebay. However, I like this one because I prefer the tuneomatic bridge which raises the strings higher above the body which is more comfortable to me. If I back out on the custom bass route I may get an MM5 and compare notes. Danelectros are also pretty cheap on Ebay, but they are notorious for deteriorating and most have that crappy wooden bridge.

I'm bumping my overall rating higher than it should be based on the POTENTIAL for this instrument. Just make sure you get a bridge with good saddle slots on it.

2004 Hellcat VI made in Korea, 22 medium frets 6 string Baritone, solid alder top, volume tone and 5 way switch, 3 duncan MH-102 pickups, maple neck with rosewood, burst finish, Jaguar shape, TonePro hard tail, sealed Grover tuners, 30" medium neck with medium frets,no case. The case is a problem. The Schecter bass case didn't fit correctly and guitar case was too small. Even though I ordered one, they appear not to have a proper case.

I play Classic and Progressive Rock and this guitar has interesting applications. I have played it through an Ampev V4BH with 6x10 Sunn cabinet, Fender 300BX with 2x15, 2x10 and an old Peavey guitar tube head with a Sunn 2x15. The Baritone can have very deep bass sound or fairly bright woody sound. This is not a guitar, however. Open chords at some settings do not sound right. Very muddy and hard to hear all of the notes. It has surprising bass applications and can substitute for some traditional bass lines easily. Chords played on the upper frets sound ok. There are a great deal of combinations for tones because of the three pickups and 5-way. The baritone is heavy like a bass and not a guitar.

The initial setup was excellent, intonation was perfect, string height was a little high for my taste but easy to adjust. Pickups were a little high but easy to adjsut as well. Fit and finish are outstanding. Neck joint is perfect, the burst finish is beautiful. The controls feel sturdy and are convenient. I have several American Fenders, Gibsons, an Ibanez and a Yamaha and this is made as well as any.

The Hellcat has done well so far. Im am not really rough on instruments but this seems very well made. It is put together with tried and true components: TonePro, Grover, Duncan. This appears to be a very well made instrument and has needed no adjustment outside of personal preference setup. I wouldn't even go to practice without a backup, no reflection on this instrument. The only comment I would have is that this is not a bass or a guitar and would be a limited function instrument for most types of music.

I am not sure, I have had no problems and try not to read warranties.

I have been playing for over 40 years. I have an American Fender Jass, fretless Jazz, American Precision Delux, Gibson EB3, Ibanez bass something, Gibson SG, Less Paul Standard, Fender Telecaster, Yamaha something guitar, a bunch of amps, Ampeg being my favorite, Proteus E-MU Keyboard and Ludwig drums. I bought the Baritone sight unseen because no local shop had one and am very happy with it. The Hellcat has a unique sound, easy to play and is a beautiful instrument. It is well made and because of the 3 pickups and 5-way switch a large variety of sounds. It is very heavy and takes a little time to get used to what will sound good and what won't. You have to be careful with some chords but on the other hand, you can use it as a bass extensively. I compared this to a Fender BassVI and the new Jaguar Baritone Custom. I felt that the Schecter sounded better and had better action. I am very pleasantly surpised at the quality of this instrument for under $500

I waited until I had a couple of months to play with the Hellcat VI so I could give it a fair and honest review. After 2 months of playing mine on an almost daily basis, here's my review:

I bought my Hellcat VI new, choosing the 3-tone sunburst. Just because these guitars are built in Korea, don't make the mistake of thinking they are built like s**t and will fall apart. The fit & finish is top notch! According to the dealer, Schecter sets them up themselves when they reach their US workshop. Believe me, it shows!

Features include:

Alder body, 30" scale maple neck, rosewood fingerboard, 22 medium frets, Grover tuners, Duncan Designed MH-102 pickups, TonePros system bridge, Volume/Tone/5-way selection switch, and chrome hardware.

Since this is supposed to be an updated Fender Bass VI, I'm going to give it a 9 only because it doesn't have a floating tremolo like the Bass VI has. It is more of a gimmick than anything else, but since I'm a Strat man, I need a tremolo arm!

It amazes me how versatile this instrument is! You want loads of bass? You got it! Want to play bright and full to get that 'Cure' sound? You got it!

After you start playing with this baby you won't be able to stop! I got my Hellcat VI initially to cover Cure songs in my band, but since then we have written 2 songs and both feature the Hellcat VI. It can fit into so many styles of playing and various melodies. Now I know why Robert Smith uses it so much!

On a side note: Robert is endorsing the Hellcat VI and will be played exclusively on the 2004. The Cure's Perry Bamonte and Robert Smith both provided "invaluable input" according to the press release.

You can find more information at:
http://www.schecterguitars.com

The action, fit & finish are very good. The guitar is light and easy to play. Action is great - you can play clean, fuzzy, or with that "buzzy bass" sound by picking hard if you want it.

The only downside I found was the volume & tone controls feel cheap, like the kind you would find on a $10 radio at Wal*Mart. They work decent, but still feel cheap. Read further for more details.

The bad news:

I have to say due to the tone & volume controls in conjunction with the lightness of the instrument, it does FEEL somewhat like a budget guitar.

Upon shipment of my Hellcat VI, my tone control was defective from the factory. When I turned the tone knob or pulled it between the up & down position, it BLASTED static out my amp. A tiny bit of slop between the tone control arm and the housing around it was the culprit.

I'm sure this was an isolated incident, but I'd be lying if I said I felt 100% about its reliability.

The good news:

I called the dealer from which I bought the Hellcat VI from and played it to him over the telephone. He was as shocked as I was. He said they have sold over 14 Hellcats so far this year and none of them had any issues. I tend to believe him since I always seem to get the lemon of whatever I buy. :P

He was genuinely concerned and contacted Schecter for me that day. Within a week I got a package in the mail from Schecter. I opened it and much to my surprise Schecter sent me a COMPLETE set of new controls! Not only did I get the new tone control, I got another 5-way switch AND a new volume too! Very nice!

I installed the new tone control in minutes and it fixed the problem. The replacement looks and feels heavy duty. It is refreshing to see a company truly cares when a customer has an issue.

WELL DONE! A+!

I've been playing for 12 years, and this is by far one of the most fun instruments I've had the pleasure to throw an arm around! I own a Fender Powerhouse Stratocaster, 04' American Deluxe Stratocaster, 03' Fender Cyclone II, and an Ovation 6751 12-String Balladeer.

If it were lost or stolen, I would replace it right away!

Besides the cheap controls, I couldn't find anything I didn't like with this instrument.

No, it won?t replace your main guitar. What the Hellcat VI will do is broaden your musical palette, creating sounds and tones that would otherwise be impossible on a regular axe.

Brand new, looks Korean in origin,(headstock angle laminate like a lot of imports) master volume/tone controls with master pull coil tap on tone control. Three mini humbucker pickups controlled by a 5 way selector. Passive electronics, maplesque wood with rosewood fretboard, body wood unknown. Gloss black finish, kind of Jaguar shaped but more compact and easier to wear.30inch scale with stop tailpiece and locking tune-o-matic bridge. Hardshell case!

Great sound, very versatile. Bright to full punchy to thin.

well done Schecter! (or whoever's making them for Schecter)

The instrument has a pretty solid feel but has that familiar "I'm not gonna last too long" feeling of Korean imports.