C-1

The shape didn’t come from nowhere. Schecter started out in the 1970s selling replacement parts, and by the 1980s its custom shop was already building C-1 bodies.

What changed in 1999 was that the C-1 joined the Diamond Series, Schecter’s production line. That’s the moment the C-1 stopped being a custom order and turned into a guitar you could find hanging in a shop. The video did the rest.

The C-1 people mean today is the Hellraiser C-1, and it leans all the way in. Mahogany body, a quilted maple top with abalone binding, gothic crosses in abalone down the rosewood board, black chrome hardware, Black Cherry finish. It is not a subtle guitar. It isn’t trying to be.

The parts that matter to your hands are the neck and the pickups. The neck is glued in, and the heel is carved away so you can actually get up to the top of those 24 extra-jumbo frets. The profile is a thin C, and the board is fairly flat, which makes fast playing and wide bends easier.

The pickups are active EMGs, an 81 at the bridge and an 89 at the neck, powered by a 9-volt battery that clips in. That’s the sound of the era in one sentence: tight, compressed, and quiet even with the gain all the way up. Chords stay clear when everything else in the mix is shouting.

It isn’t trying to be subtle. It was never asked to be.

This is where people get confused, because Schecter has hung the C-1 name on a lot of guitars.

The one in this story has a set neck and a 25.5-inch scale. The C-1 Custom has a shorter 24.75 inches and different pickups, and it feels more like a Les Paul under your fingers. The C-1 Standard is bolt-on. The Damien, with the bats on the board, is bolt-on too and a different model altogether.

And don’t call Horton’s video guitar a Hellraiser. The Hellraiser trim came along in 2006, six years after “Last Resort.” And Horton’s own living signature C-1 is a bolt-on. The man Schecter credits with the C-1’s debut has his name on a different kind.

Every so often a guitar company tries to make its loud guitar respectable. Tone it down, lose the crosses, offer it in a nice natural finish.

The Hellraiser C-1 is still regular production in Korea, and it still wears the crosses, the abalone, and the black chrome. There’s a version with a Floyd Rose if you want to dive-bomb. Either way, it shows up looking like the music it was made for, the same as it did on television in 2000.