Washburn BT9

Washburn BT9, 1996, Korea. SSH, 5-way, maple neck/fingerboard, stock Washburn "Samshin" pickups. Fender tremolo. Grover tuners.

Despite above review, I find these pickups to be exceptional for stock. I upgraded my peavey predator (love the neck) with duncan jb junior and lil' 59's, mini-humbuckers which are $75 each, and the washburn smokes these pickups in both output and tone.

on inspection they are nothing high-end, wax potted "samshins." generic korean models based on strats.

jack and switch giving me some static. cleaned with peavey gunk remover, helps considerably, but i may be making a foray into switch replacement soon.

intonation/action easy to adjust, solid neck, plays beautifully. needed to adjust pickups, apply springs. i blocked the tremolo with a maple block. the guitar has nice sustain.

questionable electronic components as mentioned above. will see. pretty standard i'm sure for a korean guitar 8 years old, and having been around the retail circuit once or twice.

called washburn because bt9 is nowhere on this guitar. only "billy t." the tech there was very helpful in tracking down this particular model, because there were 15 models in this bt series. he suggested upgrading with seymour duncans i might do that down the road.

guitar listed for $630 in '96, and some US made models with duncans listed for $1600.

i'm drawn to that wolfgang/peavey predator body, and this guitar jumped out at me for that reason. the components are far beyond the predator though, or entry guitars, and really sound/feel semi-pro to me. i do perform live and this will be my main axe until something better comes along. for $100 and an evening of adjustments, mods, i couldn't beat it.

This is a new Washburn BT9 made in Korea. 22 frets on a maple fretboard on a maple neck. Solid Alder body with a beatiful transparent blue finish. It has a white pearloid pickguard, 1 600 series humbucker, 2 single coils (all passive). The body style is very similar to the Peavy Wolfgang, but is set up more like a stratocaster. It has a vintage-Fender style tremelo and Grover tuners. All metal hardware is black. The neck is very thin and wide, which I prefer. This guitar sold at Musicians friend for $500, and I played one locally and fell in love with it, but hated the high price ($700), so when I saw the swap shop selling them for $350, I had to grab one. I actually traded a Kramer Striker 200ST that I'd grown tired of for it and paid very little cash for it. Not a bad deal.

I play Rock-blues type music (all originals) and this guitar suits me just fine. I play through a Fender Blues Jr. using an Arion SD-1 distortion box. The pickups, though fine sounding, don't suit me well and I'm going to replace them with a Duncan '59 Humbucker and some Texas special single coils. I was thinking about adding some piezo transducers to the bridge to get acoustic sound. I'm going to also add a graphite nut so that the trem has a better chance of staying in tune, but since I've moved away from using trem bars, I may just forget about it. The sound is really good unplugged. Plugged in it sounds really good, but the stock pickups have got to go!

Here's where I had a little problem. When I received the guitar, it was set up very poorly. There were annoying buzzes everywhere, the pickups were too close to the strings, and the 5-way pickup selector was malfunctioning. After emailing Don at the Musician's Swap Shop, he said that it mistakingly got sent out without going through their workshop and getting set up properly. He insisted I send it back as his cost, which I did. I was getting a little frustrated, but Don was nice enough to send it back complete with a Washburn hardshell case. That more than made up for my trouble, IMHO. The finish is beautiful. The neck is nice and wide, more so that I was used to, but it's great because my hands are quite large. Everything works fine now, and I'm as happy as a pig in shit.

This guitar is light and solid. Everything is sturdy and should last the test of time. The finish is there to stay. The strap buttons look a little weird...almost like plastic, but upon further inspection, they are steel with black to match the hardware with a texture on them. Very nice. I don't really gig any more, so I don't give a shit about backups.

Haven't tried it yet with Washburn, but the Swap Shop is a pretty good place to do business with. I've heard Washburn is a nightmare to deal with.

I've been playing for 18 years. I also have some junk guitars such as a Series 10 and a Global LP copy, which play nicely enough and sound good (I have a bit of a knack for find good, cheap guitars). I wish the guitar has a coil tapping feature on the humbucker, but I will add that later. If it was stolen or lost, I'd buy another. I love the looks and sound of it, and the fact that it has a pickguard, which makes modifications to the electronics easy. I hate the Washburn pickups. I was contemplating purchasing a Mex Fender Strat, but I could never find one I liked...the necks are too thick on those, and the cheapo line of Yamaha, which are very good, especially the necks. I chose this one because it looks different and I liked the way the others I tried played. All of the Washburn BT guitars I've played have been very good performers. You can get BT2's, and 3's on Ebay for a song.