I think the Cort is great. I also think I may have to toss a coin.
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I think the Cort is great. I also think I may have to toss a coin.
I'm very good at spending other peoples money. :)
I have one friend who almost always takes me for advice when he goes guitar shopping. I've never once failed to double his budget. But then he's never regretted his purchases either.
Dropping in soo late in the conversation here, Reading through the guitar suggestions there are some good suggestions.
I can vouch for the Cort, own a mr710 and mr730. With the 730 being solid mahogany back and sides and a solid sitka spruce top and the 710 solid sitka top with laminated mahogany back and sides. The 730 is dearer but ow my what a difference! That being said the 710 is still a lot of instrument for the money (600aud). The 710 is mine (lefthanded) guitar and needless to say I still envy my partners right-handed 730 :-D!
Maybe good to mention that Cort makes a lot of instruments for Ibanez, ESP, schecter.
I have played the sfx and found it to shrill for my taste, and I felt it was mostly due to size.
I have also played a takamine with mahogany top 'gx11me' ( https://www.takamine.com/GX11MENS) which because of the mahogany sounded soo much warmer even though it is a 3/4 size guitar.
I would highly recommend looking at the takamine, though I do not know if it has the narrow neck you are looking for (it didn't feel wide).
Personally I love the look of Lag guitars but haven't been able to play one as they had no leftys here in Aus...
So, that was my download. Have fun looking at guitars and selecting the right one. I often find the search as rewarding as buying and owning the instrument.
Hey Rolf, thanks!
I love the GX11ME, but I'm searching for a model with a cut away.
Yesterday I was told about some estate sale of a guy who sold off a deceased friend's belonging, and there were a bunch of guitars. I picked up the Ibanez exotic wood quilted ash for a real steal, around 150 Euros. It's around 13 years old and doesn't look like it was ever played. I cleaned it and it is spotless - not even the frets have any markings. There are still factory strings on. :eek:
Now I can noodle around with it until the shops reopen and then take all the time I need to test and compare other models.
The Ibanez has a really great neck - like an electric guitar - very pleased with it. It has a jumbo body, so not exactly what I had in mind, but I can handle it well and the dry sound - without pickups - is really not bad. Of course, I only have my classical guitar to compare, but I really can't complain. Maybe you guys would laugh, I'm okay with it. I can practice my stuff and get a better one - if I still want it! - in a few months. I also start to like the look of the quilted ash :D I found it pretty flashy at first and was looking for a bit darker color, but to be honest, the longer I stare at it, the prettier it gets.
You can't really go wrong for that price.
We're going to need some photos!
That's great to hear! As Simon said, pictures ;-)
I had hoped for some nice sunshine to take pictures, but alas, only rainy days ahead.
So I snapped a few while restringing it today:
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It looks like the Abalone is real. I also like the clean fretboard. Put on new Elixir Nanoweb strings, never tried these before but the color matches the wood quite well ;-)
And well, a tiny hint of sunlight yesterday:
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Soooo... quite happy with it so far. Now let's see if it lasts :-)
Looks really nice. My first steel-string acoustic was an Ibanez.
The B-band system it's got on it is a really good system, I've got one on my-12-sting and a friend has one on his Lakewood and another friend one on his Ibanez 12-string.
The downside is that the pickup itself can fail over time (I believe it's some sort of capacitive system, not a piezo system) and B-Band as a company are sadly no more. The few spares that remain are a dwindling resource, so if you do use it plugged in and it stops working, certainly have a look round for spares, but you may need to get a completely different preamp and pickup installed. At least your preamp is a more conventional shape. My Ibanez 12-sting friend's preamp has a unique curved shape to it on one end, so impossible to fit another preamp without a lot of work. Luckily he managed to get one of the few remaining replacement under-saddle pickups (in the UK at least).
You are right, I heard the same about the preamp! So far, it's still working. Depending on whatever fails, I'm confident I could probably repair it. I got quite good at soldering lately (well, mainly after building my cnc router, which I should actually finish wiring...) so I hope I don't have to, but I maybe could :)
There are also Ibanez Exotic Wood models around that have a rounded and much smaller preamp, I guess these are also quite difficult to replace, you would have to route a bigger hole into the side which I would not be happy about.
The fishman preamps are quite cheap in China but I have no idea if these are fakes or the real thing? There are spare parts around, also, so maybe the pickup could be replaced easily with one of those. Easily as in "somebody has to put their whole arm through the soundhole and try to fiddle with the cables from the inside"....
Anything cheap from China is almost certainly a copy. Now some copies that don't pretend to be the real thing can be very good. But most of those trying to pass themselves off as the real thing sound pretty bad.
Yes, there are always soundhole pickups you can fit if you need to, or stick on some under-bridge piezo disks like the K&K Sound Pure Mini. I fitted some to a friend's top-end Avalon acoustic and they sound great.