Rice Custom Guitars Osprey, #102

[johnnyqb]

I went to the Rice pad yesterday, to take a look at and play #110, the seafoam green tele. Not surprisingly, the guitar won me over in a hurry. It has an incredible combination of pups and all the feel and soul that you could want from a tele. I had just decided to take her home, when #102, the just barely finished pine Osprey caught my eye, and I plugged it in. WOW! I felt instantly I had never heard such a great vintage tone from a tele-type guitar. The Lollar pickups that the Rices had wound for this guitar and its sister, #103, are really "all that." They are the best of every tele pickup I have ever heard, wrapped into one set of pups. They have power, twang, depth, richness, and pretty much do whatever you want them to. There is all this richness when you dig in, just like you want from a great tele-style guitar. (I know Rich does not think of these as teles per se, but I am putting them in that family anyway. The pickups, bridge, etc. qualify it as a tele species at least.). But the tone of this guitar cannot be explained just by the pickups. The pine chosen for this guitar has a beautiful soft ripply resonance that is just right with the size of the body, and the union with the neck. Sometimes, with a lightweight body, the hard strum can overwhelm the body, where the vibrations seem to emanate out of the body, like there wasn't enough body to properly contain it. A heavy tele can do the opposite, where it smothers the vibrations, so that they are not allowed to bloom and breathe. And then other bodies are just right, where you can strum a chord, and grab the body and feel the hum in there, at play, darting around joyously, with just the right amount of space, weight, and depth. This guitar has that elusive thing in the body that makes it perfect in this way. I know these characteristics are sometimes downplayed, or exaggerated, but here it seems properly emphasized, if only because there MUST be some explanation for the magic of this tone.

Seeing Rich grin while tapping the body with his knuckle is another way of explaining this body. This pine is very sweet. It has a hollowness of tone that perhaps can only come from being one single piece, in the absence of hollow chambers. But this sounds better to my ears than a hollowed out body, because there is still body there, to carry those vibes throughout. Or how about the headstock? Does this Osprey headstock have any effect on tone? Your two high strings are shorter, due to the tuners divided three per side. Is it coincidence that these high E and B strings seem to have a particularly clear snap to them? I don't know, and my reach is exceeding my grasp in trying to describe these things. But there is something there, in this guitar, that is all the magic I am looking for. And a decent part of it does seem to come out on those high strings, for some reason. While picking chords I could get those high strings to ring out clearly in a way I had never quite managed before. Again, the Lollar pups in these are something to behold. I have to add that this is the finest Rice neck I have ever played, with the possible exception of #44, the original blackguard. That was one mighty fine piece of maple. But this one is finer to me now because I would humbly suggest that the Rice's neck work has gotten even better over the last couple years. The necks were always great, but when it is all done right, you get that extra bit of bliss. Here, Chris Rice's nut work seems mighty fine. The spacing, the heights, the softness of the nut edges as they blend into the wood toward the headstock, all seem to be reaching new heights of mastery. Similiarly, Rich seems to have a more refined and definite vision of what he wants the back of the neck to feel like, and this one felt like an old friend the minute I grabbed it. Rice guitars always have the most perfect feel of neck up in the area around the nut , first fret into headstock than any other guitar I have played. This is one of the many things about this guitar that shows to me what guitar lovers the builders are.

I am still buying #110, which is equally phenomenal, but I had to rave about this Osprey.

[cubado]

[johnnyqb]

here's a couple short videos: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PitG4ww0DrY
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WA6qs5G7QSc

[rcarreiro]

I really like the body on the Osprey but the headstock has not grown on me yet.

[prsflame]

Congrats! I love the body shape. The headstock needs to grown on me, but judging from your tone report, once I heard all of that tele goodness, I don't think it would bother me at all. Play and enjoy!!

[Chris Rice]

I'm glad to hear you're digging her so much. That little Richter is a cool amp.

As for the headstock, #102 is the only reverse headed Osprey on the planet.
The normal headstock has a different visual balance to it. Like this:


Keep playing!
Chris