What kind of acoustic guitars can you get for £300 UK pounds these days? Yes, you can get a good quality and well made guitar, but THIS guitar is much, much better than just good. It is a VERY good guitar regardless of price, but the price makes it EXCEPTIONAL. I have no idea how a guitar of this quality can be made and sold at this price and still make a profit, but I am not complaining.
The walnut back and sides have a really attractive grain and the fingerboard is nice and dark with very tight grain. I think this one is Pau Ferro and I was expecting it to be lighter coloured wood. The beautiful abalone (probably not real abalone) fingerboard inlays are quite dark. I was worried that they would be too sparkly and shiny, but they are sublime and expensive looking. The abalone body binding and rosette inlays are splendid and really well finished. I don't normally like shiny "bling", but this guitar is a welcome exception. With all the inlays, binding, and gold coloured tuners this guitar LOOKS expensive. Clearly it was inspired by a Martin D-41 and I think it looks just as nice but at a tiny fraction of the price.
The satin lacquer on the body and neck has been perfectly finished and the neck is lovely and smooth to play. The machine heads feel as though they are good quality and are very smooth without any play. The frets are very well finished and the nut slots are cut perfectly. The overall action may be a little high for people who are used to playing electric guitars, but there is enough saddle height to have it taken down a bit for those who would like the action lower. For me it was perfectly set up and played wonderfully straight out the box after being tuned.
The guitar has a very well balanced and rich sound with good projection, and the under-saddle pickup and Fishman preamp gives the expected nice "woody" sound of a piezo transducer of this kind. It is a joy to play amplified and unamplified and I think I will be spending a lot of time playing this guitar.
The ONLY reason that I have given a 4 instead of 5 for "quality" is that somebody failed to check the electrics before and after it was strung up and inspected. The small plastic connector carrying the battery power to the Fishman preamp was not plugged into the preamp and therefore the preamp did not work. I had to remove all the strings and reach well into the guitar to find the connector, untangle it from the other cables so that it would reach the preamp, and plug it in. I had to put on new strings after fixing the problem because it is very fiddly trying to restring with the same strings after they have been cut to length. A plug like this does not normally just come loose unless it wasn't properly pushed into place to begin with. There were NO OTHER quality issues though. The "fit and finish" is perfect and I am very pleased with my latest bargain.
