New Guitar Day: Caparison Horus M3 ‘Revive Series’

My love affair with 80's rock and metal epitomised in a single guitar.

Published in

Red Chair Riffs

8 min readAug 10, 2018

Caparison Horus M3 Revive Series in ‘Black Rose’

11 January 2018 and my close friend and best man at my wedding was going about his usual day job, meeting clients and organising finance for businesses around Wales, except this particular day was a bit special. Today Marc was meeting with George Ösztreicher. A prolific businessman and the owner of South Wales music stores Cranes Music.

Mr. Ösztreicher has owned a few businesses in his time and Marc was meeting him to discuss a few business matters. During his meeting, George explained about his businesses and how Cranes had sadly closed its Cardiff store to focus on other things. He also mentioned that he’d bought the well respected Japanese guitar manufacturer, Caparison.

Marc, was quick to tell him how jealous I’d be when he got the opportunity to tell me about the meeting and explained I was a huge fan of guitars in general and would have loved the opportunity to sit in a room with a well respected man, talking about guitars and the state of the industry. To which George replied, “well, if there’s anything your friend needs…”.

I’ve got love for you if you were born in the 80’s — in pursuit of a metal guitar

Rewind back to nearly 2 years ago and it’s early 2016 and I was going through a phase of really wanting a soloist guitar, for \m/etal! I had a Strat, a Tele and a Les Paul so that was the next logical purchase for me, given my varied taste in music.

I’ve had a love affair with 80’s hair rock/metal since a young boy and always loved the sound associated with that era; cheesy as it often was. None of the guitars I owned looked close or felt like what I imagined a guitar associated with that era should feel or sound like.

Fact is, two years on, I now know that I can get very close to the sound and tone I want with my trusty Les Paul. However, it doesn’t have a particularly fast neck and there’s no locking Floyd Rose floating bridge — a staple of that style of guitar. In order to pull off the dive bombs and wild pitch bent squeals, I *needed* a guitar with one of those! I guess maybe a couple of extra frets…and easier access to them would be a good idea too!

I’d done a bit of research and saw online that Cranes had a few Caparison guitars in stock, they’d always appealed to me aesthetically and I’d admired what I thought was great workmanship on those guitars.

I loved the way they’d finished their guitars with a very cool textured look. They called one of their finishes ‘Frozen Sky’ which was basically grey, literally sponged on, by hand, over a darker grey/black with touches of white. It looked incredible. I had that in the back of my mind and wanted a Caparison TAT in Frozen Sky — a 24 fret through body neck with 25 ½" scale length, perfect.

The wedding guitar

I’m walking around Cardiff one day in February that year with my fiancé and absolutely desperate to buy a guitar to “commemorate our wedding” the following April. Haha, any excuse! I made a beeline for Cranes to have a look to see if I could find a TAT to try. However, amongst their lineup of exquisite Caparison guitars, I spotted something else that took my eye…a purple coloured 27 fret beast that had an angled neck pickup, I was quite taken with it so asked to try it out.

This is not the guitar you’re looking for…

It was a 2012 Horus M3 in Black Rose. It played beautifully. The neck was slightly chunkier than I liked at the time, but it had a satin feel to it that just played beautifully — I’d never had a satin guitar neck and this was perfect.

It sounded huge too. Thick, tight, defined and had plenty of low end, this didn’t sound or feel like a weedy guitar, it reminded me a little of a Les Paul. Unsurprising given the 24 ¾" scale length.

Unfortunately, the deal breaker was that I was getting married and funds were low — so I left the guitar there and it inevitably sold to someone else!

Back to the Future

Fast forward two years — two years I’d spend searching for a good condition second hand Horus in Black Rose — and my friend tells me his tale about how he meets Mr. Ösztreicher, owner of Caparison guitars, and that he’s basically just asked me if there’s anything I need.

I asked my friend to inquire if they were still able to make that guitar in that finish — I’d not seen a Caparison production line guitar in that finish for years. I found an old spec sheet on the Cranes website and sent it over. I was told to send all the information over to George’s son, Gabriel, who was in charge of Caparison, and he’d be able to help.

A non-custom custom

My guitar in production (middle), just after being painted (sponged) in ‘Black Rose’.

Gabriel replied within minutes and was indeed happy to inform me that Caparison had decided to do a very limited run of Horus-M3’s, with the same specification and in some of their classic finishes. They called the batch the Revive Series.

The long but rewarding 6 month wait for my dream to become a reality had begun.

First impressions — the review

It feels nicer and considerably better than the 2012 model I tried, the neck seems thinner and faster to play.

I asked Caparison about this and they’ve since confirmed that they’ve refined the neck profile and body composition, as well as considerably upgraded the electronics and worked with Schaller to upgrade the screws and parts of the bridge that are susceptible to corrosion — exclusively for Caparison guitars.

The build quality is impeccable, it’s a solid chunk — the M3 stands for a big piece of Maple sandwiched between two large chunks of Mahogany. It’s a deeper body than my old PRS, and I like it that way, again, reminds me of my Les Paul but more ergonomic.

The Ebony fretboard is simply exquisite. It’s the only Ebony board I have now and it just feels and looks beautiful — compliments the guitar so well. The iconic clocks on the frets look great too.

The upper fret access is perfect, the large double cutaways allows for getting right up to the 27th (yes, 27th) fret and beyond. I didn’t think I’d ever use the frets beyond the 24th, but I often do (even with my chunky fingers) and love it. It’s a really fun guitar to play, especially in the higher registers.

When I look for a guitar, I pay attention to the note definition on the lower strings and if it sounds honky or flubby on the bass end, but thankfully this is a tight sounding guitar. It took a while to figure out how to EQ it as it’s a lot different sounding to my others, and surprisingly different in character to my Les Paul, a bit darker.

Palm muting was a bit of a learning curve. You have to be accurate with your right hand positioning otherwise you’ll get a bit of a honky midrange creeping in to the sound.

Unlike my old PRS, it doesn’t get scratchy above the 12th fret on the higher strings, the sound doesn’t get thin and awkward, it sounds massive, full bodied and powerful.

The Floyd

Took me a while to figure out how to tune with a floating trem, but watched a video and all became clear, takes a bit of patience!

In all honesty, I thought I’d use it more than I have, but I guess it’ll take time to learn how to incorporate some tricks into my playing. The obligatory dive bomb is necessary every time I pick it up!

Final thoughts

I bought this guitar for two reasons — I mostly play heavy rock/boarderline metal and the riffs I write are perfect for this style of guitar. The upper fret access is a must and it allows me to play tunes I’ve always wanted to play on a superstrat/soloist guitar…playing them on a Les Paul doesn’t feel quite right.

Secondly, I want the sound and feel of those old 80’s rock records I listened to as a kid. This delivers that sound and it feels so much better to play those songs on this neck than the Les Paul. Maybe it’s all in my mind, but it just feels more authentic and easier to play on the Caparison.

My only gripe would be that I would find a tone control useful and a coil tap like the new Custom Line models have, would be great.

I couldn’t be happier and it’s taken over the Strat as the most played guitar and the one I gravitate toward at the moment, for obvious reasons…new toy!

We’re just constantly pushing up our quality wherever possible, it’s an ongoing mission. — Gabriel Ösztreicher

Caparison is a company looking to constantly improve and evolve their lineup. This is a reissue and yet still they’ve upped the quality of it. Something many other companies could do well to learn from.

Caparison have a new fan and next time they do a limited run, I’m aiming for that classic TAT in ‘Frozen Sky’!