Hi Rick,
I acquired Sea Monster approximately 10 months ago. I intentionally wanted to wait a while before providing my thoughts. I appreciate your patience.
Prior to Sea Monster I was playing shorter scale hard-tailed fiddles. So Sea Monster was different for me in many ways. The Advantage neck profile is the best feeling neck I’ve ever played. The neck profile alone makes me feel like a better player in that I’m able to comfortably execute difficult passages on a longer scale neck – I went up a heavier string gauge because I found my attack more aggressive due to the ease of play. The new trem is so much fun and so much easier to manage than a Floyd – unlike a Floyd, this trem appears to move chord shapes together in tune, which is amazing and changes the whole approach to playing a trem – excellent tremolo design.
The 10 way switching provides so many useable tonal options and again, makes it so much fun to play.
Over the past 10 months I’ve been asking you various questions and you patiently answered all of them. Since day 1 I have loved Sea Monster but it took time for us to fully bond – no fault of the guitar, but rather I’ve been accustomed to playing certain guitars/specs, and soon realized with Sea Monster, that I needed to make some changes in setup re: string gauge/action in order to fully connect – I learned all about the Rick Toone tremolo when I performed the setup. So, not only have I bonded with Sea Monster via the physical act of playing but also by learning the components that make up Sea Monster – many of those components are specific to Rick Toone guitars. I’m now a big fan of Rick Toone guitars. (Rick. R, 2024)
Hey, Rick! I just want to send another thank you for the incredible guitar you built for me. Of all the luthier built guitars I own, yours stands head and shoulders above them all. The Spearfish excels at all styles of music, from rock to blues to jazz and even finger style. Clean, distorted, ambient, the Spearfish sounds great no matter what style and no matter what amp I put it through. It is the standard I use for seeing how an amp sounds. The volume and tone controls are far and away the most responsive of all the guitars I own and the single coil switch is the closest to true single coils. The neck is supremely comfortable and intonation and string balance are superb. I have considered selling all my other guitars, as the spearfish is really all I need. One of the nice features about it is that I can go from super light gauge (I’ve used Billy Gibbons .07’s all the way to .13’s) and not be concerned about the neck. Everyone who has played it is instantly impressed at how effortlessly it plays and how full and rich it sounds. A truly stellar instrument. Thank you and I wish you continued success. (Bill Mitchell, 2024)