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Good all-solid acoustic at ~£500-£1000- Furch? Dowina? Something else?
Base theme by DesignModo & ported to Powered by Vanilla by Chris Ireland, modified by the "theFB" team.
Comments
The purchase was seamless. Kieran was extremely helpful, recommending one of the two Chardonnays he had in stock based on my playing requirements (fingerstyle). He also sent photos of the two guitars. The purchase was post Brexit but there were no issues. I paid the import duties to the carrier and the guitar was delivered pretty quickly. It surprised me to find that even with customs charges it was cheaper than if I'd bought it in the UK.
That's good to know that the purchase went well. I think being in NI it should be even easier, from what it says on his website, at least.
I don't have a walnut guitar but I do have one in Queensland Maple (which is unrelated in a botanical sense but similar in a tonal sense) and it has a cedar top. I really like the combination. It is mellow without being dull, crisp without being shouty. It is especially suited to fingerpicking and plucked chords but responds well to strumming too.
I think the Maton I tried was QM back and sides. It reminded me (overall, not just the QM b+s) a bit of a Gibson, a similar feel IIRC.
Also I'm not sure of the wisdom of making my playing the centre of the sound. LOL.
In reality, you can play anything on anything and we all tend to over-think these things. Just the same, some guitars you pick them up and they say "Hi! Let's go direct to bluegrass!" or "Just drop that E to D for me and we will go seriously Celtic". And other guitars, you pick them up and they say "Hi, where do you want to go today?"
My rosewood guitar, for example, it always wants to go to James Taylor in the 1970s and quite often I just let it take me there. (Not actual James Taylor songs, I only do originals, but stuff in that general vein.) But I can always say "No, we are going to play a jazz-blues* today" and it actually does a very good job of that. Just the same, if I've already decided on something jazzy and bluesy, it's not normally the guitar I'll reach for first.
I think it comes down to quality. Thinking about uncoloured guitars, if they are good enough they will play whatever you want just fine and never be bland. That hand-made $6500 Tommy Emmanuel Personal I played in Melbourne the other week was the ultimate "bland" guitar - in one sense it had no obvious "personality" but every different thing I played on it sounded great. My cedar-QM dreadnought, in a more modest way, is similar.
And we have all played many a cheaper guitar that was bland on first impression and stayed remorselessly bland no matter what you did on it. (Most of the better cookie-cutter laminate guitars I have played fit this description.)
I've never played a Dowina, or even seen one in real life, but I've heard enough good things about them from people I respect to be reasonably confident that they are the real deal. Hell, I'd be happy enough to take a punt on buying one sight unseen if I was in the market. (Mind you, I very much prefer to get hands-on with the actual guitar before I buy it. Mail-ordering acoustics is for thrill-seekers.)
* "A jazz-blues": in my not-so-skillful hands, that is a blues with a 9th chord somewhere in it.
But yeah agreed with what you're saying there, I know what you mean exactly (about the coloured and uncoloured guitars, I mean).
I also know what you mean about ordering online. I guess you could say that ordering any guitar or bass online is a little risky... but I get the feeling (I could be wrong) that it's riskier with acoustics. If the action is too high, apart from the truss rod, there's not a lot you can do unless you're willing to do serious (well, serious in my book, anyway) work. With electrics or basses there's a bit more you can do without having to be a luthier.
That being said, if I only buy stuff I can easily try... that does massively limit me in terms of what's available. Which is also annoying.
(What you said about Dowina is interesting, too- that's kind of what I'm hoping, too. That's the kind of reputation which Furch had, too, and it was (at least in my opinion) correct. Just the Furches are about £200 more than the Dowinas... and also I sort of wonder what the Dowinas are like, lol.)
The fact that with the Ceres line you can get a European made, all solid instrument with rosewood b&s, tap tuned dolomite spruce top and ebony FB & bridge for under £1k astounds me.
However, I haven't seen many for sale in the used market and would be concerned about depreciation...
I do fancy a spruce top but I'll blame listening to Billy strings on that one
Picked up a Harley Benton baritone acoustic at the same time, can't fault it, neck is great, satin finish,I really wonder what the difference between the likes of alverez or guild baritones would be like.
I'm in Dublin and I feel quite a few of the old reliable shops are gone, so getting a wide selection to play is hard, although I found music maker really helpful.
I'm also not sure about rosewood... I'm not sure if I want it or not. My sister's is rosewood and it sounds awesome, but it was really the only rosewood guitar we tried that we really liked. That being said I found a clip on Youtube comparing the satin/solid (vintage series?) Dowinas, and I think the rosewood one sounded best, lol. I think they were all cedar tops, though (my sister's is Englemann spruce IIRC).
That's true about depreciation. I never get round to selling anything, but at the same time you never know. Rarely being available used might be a good sign, but it also might just be a sign they're not that common. I do see that quite a lot of the shops who used to stock them here in the UK no longer seem to, but at the same time that doesn't always mean very much- a lot of people just want the big names.
Thanks, that's very useful info. How does the HB compare to the Faith? That would be pretty helpful for me considering I'm pretty used to what Faiths are like (since my sister has one, and when she was buying, we tried a bunch of them).
It's the same up here, a lot of the shops have shut. It sucks, but at the same time they didn't always have all that much I wanted to try or were that welcoming when you did want to try them (not all, some are great, but some less so).
I have no idea either way, but it's not impossible- they wouldn't be the first manufacturer who did that. I know Edwards did, for example. I think STR do something similar with one of their basses- it is made in Japan all right (far as I know) but all the wood etc. comes from their Philippine (?) factory.
I'm not sure. It sort of doesn't and it sort of does. If it's a good enough guitar, to a certain extent it might not matter. But if you're buying it because you think it's very good value being MIJ, or think that MIJ signifies quality (which you may be doing if you have to buy blind, like me), I think you'd be kind of miffed if you found out that it was only "technically" made in Japan. Also just in principle, I'd rather be told everything up front, and then I can make my own mind up.
That kind of happened me with my Edwards- when I bought it, I thought it was completely MIJ. I only found out later it wasn't. I have to admit I was a little bit annoyed- I could have bought a genuinely MIJ Tokai for a similar price, and a lot less bother. It's still a nice guitar- but it does leave a bit of a taste in your mouth.
Apologies for slight thread hijack.
No worries about the hijack- first of all I don't think it even was a hijack, it was a guitar worth considering around my budget, and second of all it's very useful to know, as I hadn't really realised that a Japanese (if it is actually Japanese, lol) Yamaha would be within budget.
The Hb I'm pretty shocked by tbh, satin neck is great, it's a baritone so it probably doesn't sound as full as the faith, but thats the nature of the beast. It's a great guitar
That's kind of the feeling (about the Faith) my sister and I had too when we were trying guitars- we tried a bunch of Taylors, Gibsons, Martins etc. first, and really liked the Taylors and (some of) the Gibsons, but they were serious money. Then we eventually got round to trying a Faith- I had been a bit sceptical because a lot of the time the cheaper stuff is kind of hyped, but I was wrong. Once we had tried them (especially the couple of really good examples), the Taylors etc. felt a bit expensive for what they were (it didn't help that because of my indecisive faffing about for a couple of years the prices of the expensive stuff had gone up about £300-£400!). We liked the Faith she ended up buying as much as anything we had tried (and more than most, including the expensive ones), and when you factored in the price, it was a no-brainer, really.
Now, I'd be the first to admit I know nothing about acoustics, and I'm much more an electric player, so there may well be nuances I was missing. And maybe 5 years down the line the dearer ones would develop and be better. But based on trying them in the store (which is all you have, really), yeah, the Faiths were really good. They also seemed to suit us as well, which is usually a good sign.
That's very useful to know as well about the HB- nice to know it's not totally outclassed by the Faith. I'm always a bit sceptical whenever someone says a cheaper guitar is "just as good" as a more expensive one- at least whenever they only own the cheaper one. It's different whenever the person owns the more expensive one, too.
EDIT: Yeah her Faith was set up really nicely, too. It could just be that that one was really well set-up, but when she came across one like that, it seemed a bit silly not to take it!
Thankfully this lot don't set off my ears!!
How's the Recording King? They have some quite nice models, too, there's an all-solid parlour which looks quite nice (though I think I prefer the nut width and scale length of the HB).
I keep the baritone in dadgad (or whatever the tuning actually is) for ambient trad noodles, the missus was impressed with the sound of it
My big problem is I just want all of them!
Mrs Tannin has major tinitus, but mine is mostly phrygian..