When it arrived I feared the worst; the box may as well have been an oversized breakfast cereal box and was bashed in in a couple of places. When I got the case out it was partly unlatched and when I opened it one of the strings was off its post. I needn't have worried; I put on a set of my regular 40-95 Rotos (think the strings on it were well-used Elixirs), did an approximate string height adjustment and the neck settled in nicely. I'll get it pro-tweaked when the time comes. The neck is almost exactly the same as my other '72, which is my favourite Ric neck. The weight is great; it's no heavier (and maybe actually lighter than) my other.
It sounds great; very "vintage-Ric", more like my main 72 then either the 21 fretter or the PW '73, although it still has a little of that upper-mid emphasis that skunkers always seem to have IMO. It actually just gives it a sufficiently different personality to make it more than simply a backup, which is great (shame I'm still struggling to play at the moment!).
As some will know, I've been after an original Azure with these features for approximately 17 years, so I'm over the moon about this. The missing binding and the damper will be replaced in due course; I want it to keep its character so the rest of the original binding will stay.
