Loved it, until I started gigging and recording

This guitar was an absolute dream when I got it at the age of 15. Looked killer, had premium features like a neck through construction, active pickups, an ebony fretboard and a Kahler tremolo. It weighed a ton but that didn’t matter when I was just using it at home sitting down. Later on in life however, I found it to be incredibly cumbersome to lug around, and the paint was fragile. I kind of regret parting with it but I know for a solid fact that if I still had it I’d be trying to get rid of it. I traded it into a shop for a modded Dean Custom zone vandetta which had a floyd rose special and A Seymour Duncan distortion pickup.

I’m going to go over some of the specs.

The good: This guitar retailed at around £500. For £500, it was a deal and a half on its own. Featuring a rare kahler tremolo which you wouldn’t find on many production guitars nowadays, in fact, the cheapest brand new guitar I know of that has a kahler is the Jerry Cantrell signature G&L rampage. The guitar also featured an ebony fretboard, which is another “premium” feature, despite being solely cosmetic. The guitar was one of the only Kerry king signature models not featuring a tribal pattern, which is great if you don’t want to look like a wannabe Kerry king, but still want his signature gear. The only thing directly linking the guitar to Kerry king was the “K.K” inlay on the 12th fret. The guitar was also pretty well made and solid overall. Rather than featuring the classic and infamous open coil BDSM pickups, these featured EMG styled “BCRA” (B.C Rich Active) pickups, remaining true to the Kerry King style as Kerry is Sponsored by EMG pickups, using the 81 bridge pickup, alongside either an 85 in the neck, or a sustainer, so it remained somewhat true to the slayer sound in that respect. The kahler was a hybrid model, meaning it could be Locked down with an Allen key for restringing or if you wanted a fixed bridge, which was an absolute life saver. It played pretty good too, and although I’m not a fan of glossy necks, this one wasn’t sticky at all.

The bad:

Ok, first of all, the weight and portability. This thing weighed just a bit more than a Les Paul if I recall correctly. However, this is to be expected from a guitar of this size and shape, so I won’t deduct points for this. The kahler tremolo, albeit one of my favourite tremolos, isn’t without its fair share of flaws. I had to bend the string holder pegs to be wider with a screwdriver to accommodate a set of 11-48 strings, then do so again for a set of KFK signature strings. (11-46 with a 52 string for lower tunings. I used the 52 in place of the 46 for C# standard). The frets flattened within a year of owning this guitar, albeit, never to a point where it became unusable but the sustain on notes around the 9th-12th frets on the low end suffered. The paint, despite being thick, was brittle. The bottom horn of the guitar was completely without paint, and for context, I dropped it once on a rubbery wood effect floor. The kahler tremolo also broke strings on a weekly basis, meaning I had to eventually shell out extra for reinforced strings which lasted 3 months. The stock pickups were incredibly bassy, and growly. There wasn’t much mid range or tone shaping that could be done with it. The tone knob just made the guitar go from growly and compressed to indistinguishable fart sounding. Instead of switching the pickups I ended up getting a guitar with EMG 81 / 85’s for a clearance steal of a price and eventually parted ways with this BC rich.

Overall opinion: This was the coolest thing when I was 14. If you want a good guitar for extreme metal ONLY, which specifically has a kahler and active pickups, then I suggest going for this, on the grounds that you can even find one. The only one of these I’ve seen is the one I owned. But overall, only get this guitar if you specifically want this guitar, as even at the time it was made, there were better choices on the market. Whilst this was £500, Jackson had X Series models for £400-£600 that blew this out of the water, same with charvels desolation series. I’d get something along the lines of those x series models over these, but thankfully you’ll probably never have to make this decision as no one ever seems to want to sell them.