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EDIT: 13/04/2010
Guitar used exclusively in these songs on me Soundclick:
http://soundclick.com/share?songid=8991870http://soundclick.com/share?songid=9011013====================================
Just for Philly :lol: (I have to say though, seeing as I can probably be counted as one of the "incorrigible-guitar-buyers" on here, I reckon I've done pretty well compared to some others: I made no promises at the start of the year, and I've managed to last almost all the way to the end of March, and even then it's a "budget" guitar... )
Anway, the actual guitar, fairly certain this will be of interest to Fernando, Fourth Feline, Wez, and some others.
One of these:
http://www.godinguitars.com/godin5thavenuep.htm. A black one, no pickups.
We discussed them a couple of years back, and I said then I wanted a black one.
Well, I was cruising Denmark St yesterday (did you know Regent Sounds has gone!!???! :o :( All is not lost, I found some of them on the street, in the rain... apparently the cartel behind most of the shops there has let this one go, and the staff have taken it over - will be closed for about 3 weeks they say, but I suspect longer...)
Where was I? Oh yeah, cruising, and I found a bunch of these in Rose Morris at internet prices... Two black, two blonde, one sunburst. I was immediately drawn to one of the natural blondes, it was gorgeous to look at. The look of the black, when faced with all three came a close-ish second.
However, I've never really played an archtop before, and I wasn't entirely sure what I should be looking for. All five sounded different. One of the blondes (not the pretty one) was nice at the bright and springy end of the spectrum, three of the others were also bright but didn't seem, to me, to have much character for what I was playing. And then one of the black ones had a sweet top end and nice mids but loads of well defined bottom as well (compared to the others).
It sounded more like I expected a "jazz" guitar to sound. The others sounded like a flat-top with the bottom end gone.
I went back in today, tried them all again, then got one of the shop guys to play the black one and the blonde one so I could hear them "out front". It had to be the black one - it's louder, mellower and sweeter, but still cuts.
Interestingly the bridge is advertised as graphtec Tusq - but I'm [
insert famous jazz guitarist name here] if it's Tusq :lol:.
This one has a rosewood bridge plate, quite
definitely, and the compensated bridge sat on the posts appears to be rosewood as well. On the others, the whole shooting-match, plate and bridge, looks like some dark plastic ... Why is this one different? Is that the mystery of the tone solved?? Who knows? Who cares? :lol: Can't find anything about it on the interweb yet (although I did find some chap recommending replacing the entire assembly as an upgrade yesterday).
Anyway, she's cute. VERY good for accoustic blues and takes a slide very well. Does the "guitar chords in a jazz band" sound well enough to make me think it sounds right (you know that "chunk-chunk-chunk-chunka" thing). It's also quite cute for folksy stuff as well. It fact it'll do anything I've thrown at it so far, with a slightly different take than a big old flat-top. By way, it's
very responsive to differing styles of attack , it copes with bashing away on chords, like you would a dreadnought, much better than the other ones in the shop did.
Now, let's make a coffee, and have a strum while I wait for the recording equipment to arrive... :D
