New Price: $799
One Sentence Summary: “The BC Rich Bich: Not the 10 String You Were Expecting”
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The BC Rich Bich 10 string is BC Rich’s Korean import version of their custom shop 10 strings. When I bought this guitar, I was attracted to the body style and the sound, I knew it was a rare optioned guitar. The guitar was an instant buy. If I didn’t buy it in the music store at that moment, the other three guys vying for it behind me would have. Unfortunately, I’d come to find that this guitar wasn’t everything I thought based on first experience.
The special options that came on this guitar were the extra 4 strings plus tuners, Neckthrough maple, ebony fretboard, Rockfield Mafia pickups (Korean made G & B), and M.O.P diamond inlays. Even though I got this guitar at about half off because someone chipped it after I bought it, I was surprised by how much more you get with a brand new Mockingbird ST for $100 less. I felt repulsed as a Bich lover that you get charged more for buying a 10 string with cheaper parts. During the year the two guitars were made, all the specs were the same except, for the Mockingbird’s Korean made Floyd Rose Original, Grover Imperial tuners, Quilted Maple veneer, and ST electronics. If you consider that a brand new Floyd Rose Special (closest tremolo to compare) costs about $99 retail and $90 retail for the Grover tuners. the Bich overall has less name-brand hardware that doesn’t add up to being more expensive as a lot of the parts used are cheap Korean mass produced parts. That means you’re getting charged more for the Bich and 10 string style and getting shortchanged with cheap tuners and lack of options. Of course, the Perfect 10 String Bich is a much more fairly priced with its ST electronics, neck binding, and cloud inlays, but the regular 10 string Bich, which was going for the same price new, had lacked all these options.
Neck Feel:
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Fact is 10 strings are made for people with bigger hands or long fingers. The width of the last fret was 58mm and the neck was around 0.900” depth at the twelfth fret. The neck also had a bit of shoulder on it as it was a “C” shape. Even when it was set as six string, the neck was too large to feel comfortable to me. In comparison, it felt much wider but thinner than my 80’s NJ Warlock, also wider and thicker towards the twelfth to the heel than my Mockingbird ST. Compared to my NJ Classic Bich, the neck on the 10string had wider shoulders on the neck, but less square at the neck joint area. The neckthrough joint on this guitar was very comfortable and form fitted with your hand, but because of how thick the neck got at the 24th fret it was difficult to hit it on the low E string.
Fretwork:
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First off, this guitar suffered from major issues. The neck on the neck through was not cut on the proper angle and made it impossible for low action, something I hadn’t noticed when I bought it. I had lowered the quad 10 string bridge and saddles down all they could go, but since the bridge was too bulky on the bottom, it had stopped around 6mm string action off the fretboard and couldn’t adjust any lower. The action was high all over the fretboard, making it problematic to be able to do complex licks on it without difficulty. The saddles of the quad bridge also rattled after being lowered. To fix this issue the bridge would have to have been recessed, meaning a cavity would have to have been cut into the body using a router and the post holes drilled deeper. I was warned by local luthiers that there could be more chip outs in the guitar in doing this job because of the cheap finish and it would be $200 to do the job. I had a trade pending on the guitar so that was not an option for me.
As far as the frets, they were advertised as jumbos, but looked and felt quite wider than regular jumbos on other BC Rich guitars. You could feel the frets on the side of the neck occasionally, but not that bothersome, and the frets felt a bit bulky especially when sliding.
Two hand tapping was decent on a clean channel – not bad but not great. Legatos and trills suffered because of the unfixable high action. When testing, bending the guitar would fret out around the 12th to 17th fret at around a step and a half on the higher three strings. The high E and B strings buzzed, when set up as a six string, from the 12th to 15th frets.
Sound:
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The Rockfield Mafias produced a beautiful tone full of depth when combined with the 10 string. The guitar could easily be used to do ballads as well as straight Rock to Heavy Metal. The pickups seem to do the best, sustain, volume, and harmonic wise when adjusted close to the strings. With these pickups, I’ve noticed that when you adjust them closer they grow louder, have more sustain, and harmonics sound fuller. The 10 string aspect add a certain attack when you do full chords on clean, but when set to distortion, the more distortion you put on, the harder it is to tell by sound that it’s a 10 string. The extra 4 strings seem to meld in with their counter parts under heavy distortion.
Finish:
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The guitar had a majorly glossy finish that showed through every fingerprint, scratch, and dent. The neck was a type of glossy that slowed down your hand when sliding. Not to mention that the finish was weak and prone to damage easy. The black finish and chrome hardware are very standard Heavy Metal colors, especially for BC Rich, but the glossy black finish helps show off that it’s a 10 string which is something I liked.
Options:
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Unfortunately, this guitar’s stock tuners weren’t worth the bottle cap you could throw at them, which is terrible for a guitar that has tuners on both sides. It would go horribly out of tune on all strings after an hour of play. The extra strings commonly dropped a step to half a step when playing within ten minutes. To replace all the tuners would be expensive or a big project, mostly because of the cost – an extra $120 for decent tuners plus Luthier fees if you’re going use one. You would have to buy two sets of tuners (one 3 on each side and one 6 in line for the body), but have two tuners left over.
In Conclusion:
Guitar Level: Mid-level.
Best Fit: Home Player/Show-off guitar.
Best for Rhythm or Lead: With its quality issues lead playing would be harder than doing rhythm on this guitar.
Has Value for studio use: Yes, if you can play through the action and keep it in tune. The 10 string was made to take out the muddiness of the E and A string in a twelve string under distortion. It was made with sound in mind.
Worth the Price?
If you were to pay $799 , maybe no. I paid about $400 because of the damage it took, but I soon found out the quality on this guitar does not run high and because it was an instant buy I wasn’t able to do the checks I usually do. After a while I wasn’t as pleased with it and traded it to get my Gibson SG. But, if I paid the full amount, I would be demanding a replacement or refund for full amount. $800 could have gotten you other guitars which don’t have as many quality issues. There’s also the idea maybe – that maybe – I was the unlucky one. That the one Bich I bought was the genetic flaw of the bunch of the large amount of guitars birthed out of Korea and there are more of the same guitar that don’t have these issues, or cynically, maybe not. Be warned though; there are genetically flawed guitars running wild and the issues found on mine might be a common issue with this model