Indie #3 - 'Shape' Extreme Plus

As a mate said on Facebook, 'how bling is that guitar!'.

The Extreme Plus is at time of writing Indies top end 'Shape' model.

• Mahogany body hand carved with a 'vine' pattern.
• Five piece set mahogany neck
• Ebony fretboard with 'vine' inlays
• Strung though body with tune-o-matic bridge
• Black hardware with matching black Grover machine heads
• Indie 'Extreme' pickups with coil tap and active pre-amp
• Satin black finish

That's right somebody in Korea has had to hand carve that design on the top of the body, it's not painted or CNCed. You can see tiny chisel marks in it if you look carefully. It's probably not to everyone's taste and even I think it's a bit ostentatious

When I bought my first Indie they had one of these on their stand. I lusted after this and the other 'Extreme' models badly but there was no way I was going to pay RRP for one.

This came up on eBay and with a bit of enthusiastic bidding it was mine. I'm a bit paranoid about buying delicate things like this and having them sent through the post so we did a road trip to Leicester to collect it.

It was owned by a guy who lived as a Warden in one of the University halls which in a bit of small world syndrome I'd stayed in a few months earlier at a convention.

So on to the sound. It is a veritable force of nature. It's sheerly monstrous with the active circuit switched on, it can be dark as the endless depths of space. With the active circuit off it's just hefty, very hefty. The coil tap isn't actually that inspiring but does add a little more choice.

Like my other Indies it plays nicely, about as good as a Korean guitar is going to and the open pore satin finish on the neck is so much nicer than the gloss finishes I was previously used to.

So, it was time to order yet another hard case.