Shecter Hellraiser 7 string to ‘ultra-wide-6’ string conversion

This is the first of two conversions for Pete. Together we’d homed in on a couple of ideal guitars - where, for a change, purchase price wasn’t the primary constraint. This meant that he could find the guitar he liked the look and tone of and I could vet it to make sure it was the most suitable for conversion purposes. With that approach we ended up with the Schecter and the Matt Heafy Epiphone; both set necked guitars with 3-4 degree neck angles and pole-less EMG pickups that together made the conversion easier and ensured a better result. In both cases making a custom Tusq nut was a critical part of the process - and a part of this was guessing a string spacing that would work best; i.e. use up as much of the extra width as possible and yet balance well as a 6 string. Both guitars needed the original bridge removing, the post bushings removing and the holes filled and new ones drilled for the Schaller bridge footings. I hand-painted over the visible parts of the ‘fill’ but we stopped short of trying to re-finish the whole guitar just for those ‘wounds’ and chose to leave them mostly hidden under the new bridges.