NGD Waterloo WL14X **NOW WITH CLIPS**

gibsongretschfan

Arrived yesterday and was immediately impressed. Which is very unusual for me and an acoustic guitar. 

The guitar itself is very light and very resonant. You have a lot of vibration transferring through the instrument to your body even when playing lightly. The deep V neck feels very comfortable to me but then again I am used to larger necks. Time will tell if I like the feel of the sanding on the neck but it hasn’t bothered me yet.

With a softer pick the guitar sounds very warm with lots of dynamics and punch. Picking out parts of chords between light strumming is a joy and the guitar has a decay that almost begs you to leave gaps and listen to it.

speaking of the decay, there is an almost “vibrato” effect when you let chords ring out that is quite infectious 

Fingerpicking can be as snappy and aggressive or delicate and warm as you want to play it.

Suprisingly (maybe not to some) playing with a harder pick (Ultex Jazz iii) produces some lovely tones. Quickly playing some chord melody standards let me know there would be a future for this guitar in front of a real book or two.

Louder strumming at first didn’t seem to be its strong point. However, after a few hours of playing it seems to be settling in which makes me wonder if I wrote this review in a week or two would I be more kind? It is, afterall, just new from the factory and arrived in the country not 3 days ago.


I don’t really do “honeymoon” periods with instruments, they either sound the way I want or they don’t. This does exactly what I imagined it was going to do and considering I’d never played or heard one in the flesh you can imagine how relieved I was not to be disappointed.

Great little guitar!

Lewy

Many congrats! I've always liked the look of the Waterloos but when they first came out their prices were nuts - you could but a real vintage original of the guitars they were copying for the same. But there seem to be some good dealer discounts happening now that makes them more viable.

You went for the exact model I would

Clips/vids would be nice!

gibsongretschfan

Lewy said:

Many congrats! I've always liked the look of the Waterloos but when they first came out their prices were nuts - you could but a real vintage original of the guitars they were copying for the same. But there seem to be some good dealer discounts happening now that makes them more viable.

You went for the exact model I would

Clips/vids would be nice!

I’m off tomorrow so hopefully will get a few clips up!

No idea about the prices when they came out , were they mad? When I tried to get one in boot burst I was told 6 months wait. Must be selling either way

artiebear

Great guitars, congratulations. I get what Lewy says, but the truth of vintage guitars of this type are usually issues to be fixed. Collings/ Waterloo = the good bits without the vintage pain in the arse.

BigLicks67

Happy NGD. Recently saw Jeff Tweedy with one of these in Manchester and to my mind it had a much better sound than the vintage Gibson L00 used by James Elkington (a fine guitarist) who was the support act.

gibsongretschfan

gibsongretschfan

gibsongretschfan

Better late than never I suppose...