Furch Red (NGD)

Tannin

Sadly, one of the two main music shops in Hobart is closing down. Family business, been going forever.,

In 1881 the late James Robert McCann founded McCann’s School of Music and Musical Instruments Showrooms. He was also a former organist and conductor of St Mary’s Cathedral Choir.
Upon his death in 1916 his sons carried on the business with one Bernard Aloysius McCann becoming the Managing Director and establishing McCann Bros Music Warehouse in 1923. By 1932 they employed no less than 25 staff and operated out of the premises 180-184 Elizabeth St, between Brisbane and Patrick Streets. Around 1935 Bernard purchased the building on the corner of Elizabeth and Melville Streets which is the home of McCann’s Music to this very day.
Since 1935 they expanded into sales of electrical goods, furniture and floor coverings, bedding and vinyl records. Bernard also founded the former 7HT radio station and purchased the Hobart Theatre Royal when it was threatened with conversion into business premises, later selling it to the National Theatre and Fine Arts Society. Bernard died in 1961 and his younger brother Leonard took the position of Manager until 1974 when he passed away.
Bernard’s son Geoffrey Bernard McCann joined McCann Bros in June 1965, managing the vinyl record department. When Leonard died, Geoff was appointed Managing Director in 1974. On 27th March 1984, Geoff changed the name from McCann Bros to McCann’s Music Centre, acquiring sole ownership of the company.
Geoff set about closing all the other departments and focused solely on musical instruments, print music and tuition; a move which consolidated the business to this very day. Geoff retired from working in the business in 2011 and then Robert Daft his assistant manager became Manager. Robert Daft retired March 31st 2020 and then guitar salesman William Harris was appointed Manager on 1st of April 2020.
On 11th September 2023 Geoff announced his decision to close the business down as there were no other family members wanting to continue it. A huge thank you goes out not only to our loyal customers over the last 142 years, but also to the Tasmanian public for supporting us every step of the way in our goal of providing musicians with the service and tools they need to perform their magic on stages around the world.

They will be missed.

I bought my Maton Messiah there three years ago, plus the usual various odds and ends from time to time. Anyway, I'm going in this morning to have a look at their guitars. The main one on interest is a Furch Red - one of these https://furchguitars.com/us/instruments/red-series/red-deluxe-sr/ - for $5857 (£3,064) which seems like a pretty decent price. I think they mostly go for around $6500 to $6900.

Anyway, it's Sitka Spruce and Indian Rosewood. I'm a bit over rosewood, but I'm toying with the notion of buying the Furch and selling my (spruce and rosewood) Messiah. I should get about $3500 for the Messiah, minus commission, so say $3000, meaning that the changeover cost would be a bit under $3000. More than I want to spend, but I'll go and have a look, taking my Messiah along with my so that I can do a direct comparison.

By the time you lot get out of bed, I'll be home again and have already bought it or (more likely) not bought it, so why am I asking for your thoughts? 

Whatever - it beats talking about jails and serial killers, so what have we all got to say about Furch Reds?

TTony

Tannin said:

By the time you lot get out of bed, I'll be home again and have already bought it 

So where is it then?


I've come across them, virtually, in my current musings about maybe buying another acoustic.  We have a "well known personality" over here who runs his guitar shop and raves about Furch (and Dowina and Eastman) in terms of the quality of their materials and workmanship and VFM compared to the more well-known brands.

Selling here for £2500-£3500 (ish) depending on the spec, so I guess he'd be comparing those against ~£5k Taylors, so reasonably high-end for a production (as opposed to custom built) model.

I've been looking further down the price scale, but not actually played on as yet (said shop being a few hours away, with other non-Furch dealers a lot closer).

Given your assessment of the Taylor range, be interesting in what you make of a comparative Furch Red.

Snags

Tony, if you are halfway curious about Furch, it's worth a trip to said personality's shop to try them out - although also worth confirming they have the model(s) you're interested in there first. Just drop into "nod and grunt" mode and play the guitars, and it's fine

There are also a couple of stockists further south, but they were even worse for me to get to when I went Furchling.

I will say that every single place I play, whoever is doing the desk compliments the Furch on sounding great and not needing any EQ at all (OK, that's partly the electronics too, but ...). I know I'm not that good of a player that it's me making the difference, so they're definitely worth checking out.

Tannin

Oh dear, I seem to have gone silly with the credit card. 


Again!

Jetsam1

That is going to be spectacular........................... I have a 2017 or so OM30 so quite a bit down the scale from this and it is excellent, can't imagine what that will be like!

TTony

Tannin said:

Oh dear, I seem to have gone silly with the credit card. 


Again!

To be fair, a credit card that's never used is pretty pointless.

Congrats on putting it to good use ...

Tannin

TTony said:

Tannin said:

By the time you lot get out of bed, I'll be home again and have already bought it 

So where is it then?

Hobart. Only 17,000 kilometres south of your place.

@Snags, I'm sure that is so. But our friend Richard is 17,000 kilometres north of my place. (Actually, my UK friend bought his parlour there, and was very happy with the experience.) [EDIT: I just realised you were talking to @TTony - my name is also Tony.]

Anyway, I slipped into McCanns today, attracted by their closing down sale. I had several things in mind and looked at all of them. There were two possible plans:

PLAN A: add yet another guitar to my collection. Try, somehow, to stay married afterwards. This would need to be something reasonably inexpensive (say  under about $3000) and also something different to anything I already have.

PLAN B: swap my least-loved guitar for something similar only better. (Technically, just buy something new - they are closing down so they are hardly going to want trade-ins - but plan on selling the old one promptly to help cover the cost.) Mrs Tannin doesn't mind me buying guitars (it's my money after all) just so long as I don't clutter the place up with even more of them,

I started with PLAN A and looked at a number of possibilities. 

Curiously enough, although I've played most factory Maton models and owned various examples, I'd never played an all-Blackwood Maton. They had all three in stock: 808 ($2399 = £1,250), 808 with cutaway ($2499 = £1,303), and dreadnought with cutaway ($2479 = £1,293). I made a beeline for the 808 without cutaway. Nice instrument but not what I was expecting. Too much upper mid and not enough of everything else for my liking. OK, that's pretty much what you expect when you play a hardwood instrument (Blackwood, Koa, mahogany, etc.) but I had thought the Maton might be a little different. I played the other two as well and wound up deciding that for all-Blackwood, Cole Clark do it better. (But beware: Cole Clark all-Blackwood guitars vary quite a lot. Be sure to play first and pick one that you like.) Of the three, I likes the cutaway 808 least and didn't bother deciding which of the other two I preferred as I wasn't going to buy either of them. (By the way, those were not bargain prices, just about what I'd expect to pay at that or another shop any old time. But I could have made an offer, given the closing down situation.)

Next up, a Pratley dreadnought, again in all-Blackwood ($2099 = £1,094). Pratley are a new Australian maker busy carving themselves out a niche in the acoustic market. https://www.pratleyguitars.com.au I've wanted to try one of their guitars since I first heard of them two or three years ago. It was broadly similar to the Maton dred, and a perfectly decent instrument, but I liked the  sound of the Matons better. 

Tannin

What else was there? Well they had a couple of those Sheeran by Lowden things. Now I've teed off on those little toy guitars before. I played one briefly years ago when they first came out and thought it was pretty sad and I've been saying bad things about them ever since. But let's take a fresh look. Maybe I was wrong. Scrub the preconceptions, just play it and see. Here was one with a cedar top for just $1459 (£761) - way more reasonable than the $2000-odd they started at. I love cedar tops. A small guitar could be a bit of fun, yes?

I was right the first time. Disliked it immediately. Next please.

Now the Guild F-55, a spruce and rosewood jumbo with a not-unpleasant sunburst. https://guildguitars.com/g/f-55e-in-antique-burst/ (As a rule I dislike sunbursts, especially those butt-ugly Gibson ones. But this looks quite nice.) Very expensive at $6899 (£3,597) though this is actually a killer price for this model - usually they go for well over £4000.) Obviously, this would be one for PLAN B (sell the Messiah to part-pay for it.) 

I'm very keen on Guild (well, the US-made ones) but didn't expect to go for the F-55 both because it is rosewood (where eny skoolboy kno that Guild jumbos should be made out of maple) and also because of the nasty-sounding 43mm nut. In the flesh though, the nut didn't bother me at all. I was quite surprised by that and I'm not quite sure why. Usually 43mm nuts bugger me up something chronic. Maybe it's a bit wider than spec, or maybe it's the neck carve. 

Sadly, it had approximately the worst condition strings I've ever seen on a new guitar and it was very hard to listen through that to get a fair picture of what the instrument might sound like at its best. I could have asked them to put some decent strings on it, but was I seriously considering buying it? Or just having a look. The latter, I decided. 

Finally, a couple of Furchs. First a Green grand auditorium in spruce and rosewood (price forgotten but close to $4000 - say about £2,000) which was very nice but not really an upgrade on the Messiah, just a different slant on the same general theme. That one was too expensive to buy as an extra, and not good enough to be a replacement. A worthy instrument, absolutely, but there didn't seem to be much point in buying it.

Secondly, a Furch Blue D-CM dreadnought in cedar and Khaya which I liked a lot. (This one actually came later, after I'd already decided to buy the Red and was killing time while my man spoke to another customer, but I'll describe it here.) It was $1819 (£948) and a lovely guitar. I didn't spend long with it but (the Red aside) this relatively cheap instrument was the pick of all the Furches I played - and the Matons too, come to that. It just goes to show that I'm a cedar tragic. Cedar and khaya (a softer, lighter mahogany, more akin to Queensland Maple than it is to the harder timbers) is a brilliant combination. I was reminded of my wonderful cedar & Queensland Maple Maton dreadnought - another lovely instrument from that same modest price range.

I played another blue as well, one with a spruce top, but didn't think it was anything special.

Tannin

Now as is my habit, I had brought one of my own guitars in to provide a familiar point of reference to calibrate my ears with. As always, I tried out one guitar at a time, swapping back and forth between the candidate and my own guitar frequently until I had a clear picture of the candidate's strengths and weaknesses. 

And by this time I'd tried about eight guitars from $1400 to nearly $7000 and the main take-home message was just how bloody good the Maton Messiah is. It creamed most of them. OK, it's more expensive than the majority of those I tried, but I was beginning to think that I would keep my wallet in my pocket. 

The Furch Red was another matter. More on that a bit later. 

Snags

@Tannin - yes, I meant ttony, didn't realise you were also a Tony. To me you're just a stain at the bottom of a tea mug. In the nicest possible way

Tannin

After a while the chap went and fetched the Furch Red.

It is beautifully finished, quite outstanding. Someone has gone to a great deal of time and trouble making every little thing as well as it is humanely possible to do. Well, you expect that in this price range. Err .... well you do with most normal brands. The American majors seem to think that they don't have to bother so long as they get the basics right. Maybe they don't. 



The sound is quite different to the Messiah. I can picture the difference without the slightest effort, it's  style of sound I hear reasonably often and have a mental tag for, but no words to describe. It's bright but nothing like a Taylor, it's ... it's ... it's a very guitar-like sound. No other instrument has that timbre. I'll have to ask friends if they can think of a word for it. It's got zing and sizzle.

Is it a better sound? No. Is it different? Yes, quite different. If it isn't better, is it worse? No, not really. It's probably more limited, but that's not an issue given that I have other guitars, including two other Matons. 

But once you get to a certain level, the sound almost stops mattering. You expect a good sound as of right with a high-end or mid-range guitar, and even with the cheaper ones at the bottom of the all-solid segment usually deliver something pretty usable, often something really, really good. 

The things that struck me about the Red, and eventually persuaded me to buy it, are more about playability. Someone at Furch has thought long and hard about what makes a guitar feel right in your hands. About what makes it easy to play. 

I am NOT talking about a low action and a good setup. Any guitar can have those things and most better-than-average guitars are pretty easy to play in that regard straight out of the box, and can always be adjusted until they are. 

No, it's less tangible things. The Furch  neck feels shorter. I don't know why - it's the same 650mm scale length and most of my other guitars and the same 14-fret neck body joint too. But somehow, if you just reach out to fret a cowboy chord with your left hand, it feels like a 12-fretter.  

The body, billed as a grand auditorium,  is much the same size as most of my other guitars, but it feels a little bit smaller and easier. Perhaps this is the two (front and back) bevels at work. 

The neck - did I talk about necks? All the Furch necks (at least those I played) were noticeably wider than an (Australian) standard 44mm neck. Furch bill them as 1 & 3/4 inch or as 45mm - and those two measurements are not the same! 1 & 3/4 is 44.5mm - noticeably wider than the 44 and 44.1mm nuts most Australian guitars come with, and lots wider than those 43mm (1 and some number of stupid 16ths) nuts I so dislike. But I rather suspect that Furch really mean 45mm (not 44.5) and half a millimetre makes a significant difference to the playability. I make fewer mistakes, buzz less, and sound better on a wider neck. I really like Furch necks.  

Am I going to say "Well actually, the Furch sounds quite different to the Messiah and I really want to keep them both - never mind the fact that I can't possibly find enough money to do that, let alone space in this small house"? 

Time enough to think about those questions tomorrow. Sufficient unto the day the evil thereof.

Tannin

One more thing. While I was sitting there trying different guitars out, two different people - one old, one young, an hour or so apart, got into conversation with me and asked me the same question, both clearly expecting the answer to be "yes". 

"Are you a professional?"

Given my very mediocre skills, this swelled my ego remarkably and possibly led to me feeing good enough to spend quite a lot of money on a new guitar.

I am now wondering if the shop pays homeless people off the city street a commission to wander in and say "Are you a professional?" to random punters.

Tannin

TTony said:

Given your assessment of the Taylor range, be interesting in what you make of a comparative Furch Red.

@TTony I'm not really a fan of the Taylor sound. I like Taylor guitars and I like the company, but their mainstream spruce and something-or-other instruments are not really my thing. Too toppy, not a sound I warm to. 

The Taylor I really like is their all-Koa one (I think I mentioned the exact model number in another thread) - it's  about £2500  ($4759 AUD) and a gem. But not remotely a replacement for my spruce and rosewood Messiah. A very different instrument . 

TTony

Tannin said:

One more thing. While I was sitting there trying different guitars out, two different people - one old, one young, an hour or so apart, got into conversation with me and asked me the same question, both clearly expecting the answer to be "yes". 

"Are you a professional?"

A professional what

Tannin said:

@TTony I'm not really a fan of the Taylor sound. I like Taylor guitars and I like the company, but their mainstream spruce and something-or-other instruments are not really my thing. Too toppy, not a sound I warm to. 

The "Taylor sound" seems to be a bit of a discussion point!

I do prefer their ES2 pickup system to the other options that seem to be available at a similar price point though.  Unless you go up-market and get the dual / triple options (ie undersaddle, soundboard and internal mic), the choice seems to come down to the LR Baggs Element or the ES2.  Of the two, I significantly prefer the latter.

And a lot of my usage will be plugged in to DAW so that's at least as important as the raw acoustic sound (I realise I could use IRs when plugged in).

WafflesOnHorseback

Wow, lovely! Congrats on another great guitar! 

GoFish

I will give salutations and offer a smiling HNGD! before scrolling back up and digesting the thread at leisure.

sev112

Lovely looking guitar, would love to see some more pictures 

Tannin

Cheers @WafflesOnHorseback and @GoFish @sev112 I'll take some more later today if I can think of a good location for it and the light is kind to me. (I'm much better at wildlife photography than I am at guitars.)

TTony said:

The "Taylor sound" seems to be a bit of a discussion point!

I do prefer their ES2 pickup system to the other options that seem to be available at a similar price point though.  Unless you go up-market and get the dual / triple options (ie undersaddle, soundboard and internal mic), the choice seems to come down to the LR Baggs Element or the ES2.  Of the two, I significantly prefer the latter.

Maton and Cole Clark guitars come with best-in-class dual and triple pickup systems as standard on nearly all models, and they are cheaper than Taylor (comparing like for like) - e.g., a 3 Series Taylor ($3199) sits about level with a 2 Series Cole Clark ($2599) a bit below a TE Maton ($2950), above a 1 Series CC ($1999) or a Maton SRS60 ($1899), slightly above an SRS70 ($2200). All of those except the SRS60 have the high-end pickups, and all are obviously superior to the 2 Series Taylors ($1699 to $1899). (But what about in the UK? Relative prices might be a bit different where you are.)

My new Furch comes with a pickup, by the way. Presumably it's a fairly good one given the price range, but I don't know (or care) what it is. (OK, I looked it up. Baggs Anthem. It is possible that I'll use it one day but unlikely.)

Dave_Mc

Excellent, well done @Tannin ;  

Shadow

I'd love to try one of these. My Blue OM-CM at the other end of the range is a great instrument so these must be stellar.

Tannin

As per request from @sev112









They have certainly gone all-out to pick nice timbers. The Sitka Spruce top (see the first picture earlier in the thread) is a beautifully patterned example, as good as I have seen, and that's lovely rosewood on the back.  The neck is khaya, the bridge, fretboard veneer and fretboard all in Ziricote.



The headstock is quite plain (which will keep @guitarjack66 happy ) but bound in Koa, as is the fretboard.



The tuners are the ubiquitous Gotoh 510s - it's pretty hard to go past them I reckon - but finished in a dull grey which I don't think does justice to the rest of the instrument. Gold would have set the colours of the timbers off so much better. Oh well, not something I'm going to lie awake over.








Bindings and trim are mostly abalone and Koa. Notice the unusual shape of the fretboard side markers. I find these much more practical as I can see them even in poor light without my reading glasses.

Do we really care about all this bling? Well, not so much, the way it plays is the main thing. But is is a pretty thing.