I've done an unusual thing.

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Larry Mal
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I've done an unusual thing.

Post by Larry Mal » Sat Jan 28, 2023 10:03 am

I have decided to part ways with that Gibson WM-10 guitar I talked about, I'll get some work done on it and sell it for what I paid and the work. It's nice, but it doesn't really do anything that my other, better, full sized guitars don't do.

So I have this really nice Guild M20 coming out, I have never had an all mahogany guitar before. I played one in the store and was very impressed with how lively, loud for its size, and sweet sounding it was. It seemed like a nice all around guitar.

But while I was chasing down a relative bargain on the M20, I found a genuine bargain- at least I think- on a Gibson L-00 Studio Walnut, so I have that coming out also.

I'll decide which one I keep, and eat the $20 shipping on the one I return.

I don't know why they call some L-00s "Studios", one of the newer ones is rosewood, which is usually sold as more expensive than mahogany. I already have an L-00 in rosewood, though, as well as a mahogany Standard. I guess Gibson is selling walnut as a cheaper wood found on less expensive guitars, but it's in no sense inferior to any other wood.

I have an idea what to expect since I have a J-15 and a J-45 and they are the exact same guitars only one has walnut and the other mahogany, and they are very different. So I'll expect this walnut L-00 to have more volume and high end to it.

Whether that leads me to keep it, I don't know. Guitar Center listed it kind of cheap in "good" condition, whatever that means, and the usual single and out of focus picture they provide doesn't tell me anything. For all I know it's missing the entire back of the guitar.

There's a slim chance I fall in love with both and have to sell some other things, a microphone and so on.

Anyway, just trying to get some conversation going. My prediction is the Guild is the better guitar and I keep that one.
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marqueemoon
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Re: I've done an unusual thing.

Post by marqueemoon » Sat Jan 28, 2023 10:48 am

I’ve tried a few newer M20s and quite liked them. I love all mahogany acoustics.

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Re: I've done an unusual thing.

Post by Embenny » Sat Jan 28, 2023 11:09 am

I think the Guild will, at the very least, be more unique among your collection, and for that reason, I expect you to keep it over the Gibson.

However, factory-built acoustic guitars are always a roll of the dice. They stick to a specification in terms of top and bracing thickness that meets their threshold for number of warranty returns, but the closer to imploding an acoustic guitar is, the better it sounds.

So, with wood being the variable material that it is, every guitar they build lies somewhere between being heavily overbuilt, and being as lightly built as a good luthier would have done with that particular set of wood.

So for all you know, that L-00 will turn out to be one of those fantastically 'alive' sounding examples and will blow your rosewood one out of the water.

Either way, I think it's great to get two guitars at once like this and take time to really compare them, especially since you can pull out any of your other guitars to A/B. It's a harsher test than you could do at a noisy guitar store with unfamiliar acoustics (the room, I mean, not the instruments).

I agree that walnut is a top-tier wood for an acoustic guitar's back and sides. I've played many walnut guitars, and had my 12-string built with it. In my experience, it tends to have the dry overtones and prominent midrange of mahogany, but with a bit more bass and treble like rosewood. It's also beautiful, and local. You can build an incredible acoustic guitar with North American woods - spruce or cedar for the top, walnut and/or maple for the neck, back, and sides.

They don't make for as nice sounding a top as mahogany, though - too dense. What's interesting is that mahogany is just about the only hardwood that seems to be soft and flexible enough to make for a decent top at a thickness that can handle string tension. It doesn't project like a softwood top, but it has a warmth and character charming enough to make up for it. You can kind of get away with koa tops, and I owned one such guitar for quite a while, but the reality is that people mostly do that for the eye candy. I eventually sold my all-koa guitar once I accepted that, with my eyes closed, I preferred every single other guitar I owned, and while I've played plenty of nice-sounding guitars with koa tops, they always paled in comparison to any comparable guitar from the same builder using a lighter wood top.

But mahogany works better than that, so I think you'll end up liking the Guild more. But the Guild is brand new, and the Gibson is used, right? Definitely keep that in mind. If the Gibson has a bunch of hours of play time under its belt, it'll likely have started to open up and will sound better. The Guild will likely feel stiffer, like it's fighting you a bit, but that would change over time. The first few hours of playing my custom builds were always a little nerve-wracking, since the first notes always come out sounding a little lackluster. My luthier had a great way of putting it, which was, "It takes a bit of time for the wood to figure out that it's a guitar now and not a tree anymore."

I always found a dramatic difference in the tone and volume of the guitar by its second and third set of strings, so that might be a factor that paints the Gibson in a more flattering light here. On the other hand, if the Guild sounds better to you right off the bat, it should only get better from there, and that'll be something to look forward to.
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Larry Mal
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Re: I've done an unusual thing.

Post by Larry Mal » Sat Jan 28, 2023 11:09 am

marqueemoon wrote:
Sat Jan 28, 2023 10:48 am
I’ve tried a few newer M20s and quite liked them. I love all mahogany acoustics.
I've never owned one, like I say. You usually see them on cheaper guitars so I kind of viewed them as cheaper for a long time.

Then I finally got the idea that they had a sound of their own and I duly went out to play some, and what you encounter mostly out there are all mahogany Martins.

I've owned three Martins in my life and one is an entry level D1 that I've had forever, I bought one of those 000-17 guitars that are new and a 000-18.

I didn't do any research into the 000-18 because I didn't think I had to, but it was a very boring and dull sounding guitar. Later I come to find out that it was a model before Martin's "re-imagining" and so it did not have scalloped braces.

None of the Martin 15 series (which is the current all mahogany line designation) has scalloped braces and they always sound kind of dark and lifeless to me. Maybe other people get more out of them than I do. Regardless, I determined that all mahogany wasn't for me. I'm also feeling that Martin isn't for me, or at least the straight braced ones aren't.

So when I played the Guild M20 I was pretty surprised at how good it sounded. The one I played- and hopefully the one arriving on Tuesday- was lively, loud, and just chimed out. For the first time I was thinking that a mahogany topped guitar sounded different to, but in no sense worse, than a spruce topped guitar.

This will be the fourth Guild acoustic I've ever bought, the other three have all been tremendous. I have a good feeling about the one that's coming.

I feel about Guild the way that I've felt about G&L in the electric world... like, why haven't I made this brand the focus already?
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Re: I've done an unusual thing.

Post by Larry Mal » Sat Jan 28, 2023 11:25 am

Embenny wrote:
Sat Jan 28, 2023 11:09 am


I agree that walnut is a top-tier wood for an acoustic guitar's back and sides. I've played many walnut guitars, and had my 12-string built with it. In my experience, it tends to have the dry overtones and prominent midrange of mahogany, but with a bit more bass and treble like rosewood. It's also beautiful, and local. You can build an incredible acoustic guitar with North American woods - spruce or cedar for the top, walnut and/or maple for the neck, back, and sides.

They don't make for as nice sounding a top as mahogany, though - too dense. What's interesting is that mahogany is just about the only hardwood that seems to be soft and flexible enough to make for a decent top at a thickness that can handle string tension. It doesn't project like a softwood top, but it has a warmth and character charming enough to make up for it. You can kind of get away with koa tops, and I owned one such guitar for quite a while, but the reality is that people mostly do that for the eye candy. I eventually sold my all-koa guitar once I accepted that, with my eyes closed, I preferred every single other guitar I owned, and while I've played plenty of nice-sounding guitars with koa tops, they always paled in comparison to any comparable guitar from the same builder using a lighter wood top.

Correct, the Gibson is a few years old. It might have opened up a little bit. On the other hand, Gibson acoustics come to me kind of... unfinished, in that they have undersaddle pickups that I immediately rip out if I decide to keep it and cheap plastic saddles. So you sort of have to imagine what it might be like down the road.

Which can be good because if I like it at first I'll like it more later.

The Guilds, though, well, you don't need to do anything to them. Guild seems to have a lot to prove and the way they prove it is by making great guitars is what it seems like to me.

You do mention the beauty of walnut, though, and that's actually a source of some concern of mine. Gibson seems to want to show off the grain of the walnut by using flatsawn wood, which can look tremendous, but at the expense of strength. I didn't know that when I ordered my J-15, but it does, in fact, have a quartersawn back.

If this L-00 Walnut guitar has a flatsawn back that might make my decision for me there. I'm not super paranoid about the back splitting or anything, but will be looking for factors to keep in mind.

I've never had a koa guitar. But your description of walnut sounds pretty accurate to me. When I play the J-15 and the J-45, often it seems like the J-15 is the superior instrument.

Gibson sometimes makes more guitar than they intend to, and the J-15 is one of those. In other times, though, they make exactly the guitar at the price point they want to, and you can see that with the G series stuff where they literally made the bodies more shallow than the full range instruments, it seems to me like they deliberately handicapped the cheaper instruments since there really can't be all that much savings in a half inch of wood.

I honestly can't find out if this L-00 Studio will have the same body depth as the Standard. Some say it does, some say it doesn't. If it doesn't it's out of here. Fuck that.
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Re: I've done an unusual thing.

Post by Larry Mal » Sat Jan 28, 2023 11:29 am

Oh, and the WM-10 I talked about a while back is seemingly an example of Gibson making a guitar to the cheaper price point accurately.

Now, I've seen a lot of people on forums swearing that their Working Man series guitars were as good as the non-entry level stuff back in the day.

But this isn't that. In some ways, it sounds very good, great bass sound on there. But the high end just isn't there. I don't know this, but it seems to me like maybe Gibson used thicker bracing or something to ensure that the more expensive guitars sounded better when you played them in the shop or something.
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Re: I've done an unusual thing.

Post by Embenny » Sat Jan 28, 2023 12:20 pm

Larry Mal wrote:
Sat Jan 28, 2023 11:29 am
But this isn't that. In some ways, it sounds very good, great bass sound on there. But the high end just isn't there. I don't know this, but it seems to me like maybe Gibson used thicker bracing or something to ensure that the more expensive guitars sounded better when you played them in the shop or something.
That's highly likely. The best braces are shaped and scalloped so that they provide maximum strength with minimum weight, since any weight savings equals more vibration from the top. It takes a fair bit of time and work to do that, even for a CNC, so skipping some of the brace shaving/shaping would mean a cheaper but less resonant guitar.

Where is this current Guild made? There have been so many factories that I've lost track.
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Re: I've done an unusual thing.

Post by Larry Mal » Sat Jan 28, 2023 12:40 pm

Embenny wrote:
Sat Jan 28, 2023 12:20 pm


Where is this current Guild made? There have been so many factories that I've lost track.
They are back in California, under ownership of Cordoba, the classical guitar makers.

Fender moved them from Rhode Island (great guitars) to California (skip), then to Tacoma, Washington (can be great but not always), then to New Hartford, Connecticut (fantastic) then sold to Cordoba and relocated to a different factory back in California (will advise).

However, while Fender didn't always know what to do with the brand, it seems that Cordoba is pretty committed so far and they have retained a man called Ren Ferguson, who was with the modern day Gibson acoustic division since day one in Montana and is credited with making Gibson Acoustic be as good as it is these days.

And of course there are the "Westerly" and "Newark Street" lines which are made overseas and as you know are very good. If I was to buy an inexpensive import guitar, I would probably focus on Guild. It seems that with this modern day Guild, though, the rounded laminate back guitars that used to be a selling point of at least some of the Guild classics is reserved for the overseas made stuff.

I have no doubt it's very good- the ones I've played have been- but it seems that Guild under Cordoba is marketing the rounded laminate backs as being cheaper than all solid woods. Guild used to use the rounded laminates on premium instruments like the D-30, which I kind of want.
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Re: I've done an unusual thing.

Post by Embenny » Sat Jan 28, 2023 1:12 pm

Thanks for that rundown. No wonder I couldn't keep them straight, there really were a ton of factories and eras involved.

I'm surprised but pleased to learn that they have a US factory still. I know Cordoba primarily through their Asian-made stuff, which is very high quality for their price point.

It sounds like this is your first guitar from the new factory. I hope it makes a good impression. Cordoba knows their stuff, so I doubt that an American factory of theirs would somehow be doing a worse job of making guitars.
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Re: I've done an unusual thing.

Post by Larry Mal » Sat Jan 28, 2023 6:29 pm

It is my first guitar from the new factory, and I might not have bought any other new guitar from them, honestly.

My first Guild acoustic, that I should not have sold, was a New Hartford D-40 that the Let's Talk Guild boys assured me would be an incredible guitar even at twice the price and they were correct.

I now have a New Hartford F-30 (basically an OM-18) and it is also incredible.

But as you've mentioned, the Guild factory has moved quite a few times, and each time it seems like there is a re-imagining of where the acoustic guitar brand will sit in the market.

In Rhode Island, they were just Guild, doing the Guild thing, which was just making great guitars.

Then Fender bought them, and the first California years seems like a weird time, Fender was having Rhode Island ship acoustic guitar parts and bodies for final assembly in a guitar factory in California with employees that had never made acoustic guitars before. Skip.

Then Fender moved the production to Tacoma, Washington, where Fender had bought Tacoma brand guitars if you remember those, seems like Fender bought that brand to shut it down and have the people there make Guild guitars. They certainly did know how to make guitars, but at this point Guild was seemingly trying to position itself as a historic company but with some modern guitars that might compete with Taylor directly. Some of the guitars were part of a "contemporary series" that had bolt on necks (which Tacoma brand guitars had) and are not highly regarded.

Apparently a lot of instruments that were not considered fit to sell still got on the market during this time.

Then Fender moved the whole thing to New Hartford, and now Guild was going to be a premium guitar company that made better guitars than their competitors but without the premium prices. You can see why I started sniffing around that. And I found it to be true, the D-40 I had was such a great mahogany dreadnaught that I really can not imagine that Martin would actually make anything better, I feel the same about my F-30/OM-18.

For some reason that didn't work out, then Fender just sold the whole thing. You have to wonder what the point of it all was.

Anyway, now Cordoba has them, and it seems like the focus is on very good guitars but with maybe a couple compromises that won't mean all that much to most people, stuff like using African mahogany instead of the more prized stuff from Honduras.

The only reason I find this interesting and hopefully you're still awake is, where does Guild exactly fit in?

The two giants in the world of acoustic guitars, Gibson and Martin, both have their own designs that have basically become what people think steel string acoustic guitars are.

So how to you compete in a field where your competitors' designs are so ubiquitous? Taylor has found a solution, Larrivee found yet another, and it seems like Guild has long been searching for one.
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Re: I've done an unusual thing.

Post by Larry Mal » Tue Jan 31, 2023 4:50 pm

So far this experiment has been a failure.

Firstly, the L-00 I was having sent out got cancelled. Not sure how that's possible, but I guess they sold it in person or something. No one told me. I was checking to see if it had shipped.

I'm a little irritated and wrote to complain. They have another used one up there and I might tell them to sell me that at the price of the other one they should have shipped to me. Or I might just let it go.

The M-20 is a very nice guitar, however, it's a little redundant in my collection. It really is a fingerpicking dream. However, I hauled out a couple of other guitars that basically cover the same territory except better. I would recommend it to anyone else, though.

Not to mention Guitar Center sent this M-20 out with some kind of bullshit Roadrunner gig bag, but Guild includes a hardshell case. I imagine rather than trying to fight them about that I'll just return it.

I'm not all that impressed with Guitar Center on this one. Usually I think they do a pretty good job.
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Re: I've done an unusual thing.

Post by Larry Mal » Tue Jan 31, 2023 5:10 pm

I'll just leave this here.

Image
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Re: I've done an unusual thing.

Post by Embenny » Tue Jan 31, 2023 5:20 pm

Forget the L-00, thats the most hardcore vintage acoustic I've ever seen. Good price, too!
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Re: I've done an unusual thing.

Post by Larry Mal » Tue Jan 31, 2023 5:23 pm

And 24 frets... you don't always get that with a vintage acoustic.
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Re: I've done an unusual thing.

Post by Embenny » Tue Jan 31, 2023 9:21 pm

True. It looks like it might be a little higher output than your average vintage acoustic as well, which is great, because I hate when I plug my vintage acoustic into my stack and it just doesn't have enough gain, you know? Like, I don't want to have to throw a boost pedal into there and mess up all that vintage acoustic tone. I want it slamming that Marshall's front end all on its own.
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