Lava ME-3 - good it gimmick?

roundthebend

I'm usually a simple guy with simple needs. My current acoustic sounds great and feels nice to play, serves me well even plugged in for solo gigs. But it is a huge thing and 25+ years old so I'm tempted by GAS.

I saw the Lava and think it has some interesting features I could use. Not least for solo gigs, but I'm also still very intermediate in my playing so the training tools and onboard recording would be pretty useful. 

I'm gonna have to try one. If they feel good and sound nice in passive mode then it seems like reasonable value. 

I wonder how easy they are to maintain - setup and repair of the bridge/nut/frets/truss.

Winny_Pooh

I believe that's the same model I tried in GG a month ago. Utterly crap tone. I'd buy a GS mini if you want a compact acoustic.

What are you after exactly?

roundthebend

Winny_Pooh said:

I believe that's the same model I tried in GG a month ago. Utterly crap tone. I'd buy a GS mini if you want a compact acoustic.

What are you after exactly?

I don't know what I want exactly, maybe I don't even need anything. A smaller guitar that sounds good unplugged and plugged would be great, for gigs and even for taking on camping trips.

I'm drawn to the extra features of the Lava though. I know it probably doesn't sound like a £1200 guitar but then if it sounds OK and does all those things well, it might still be a good buy. It could be a great songwriting tool.

Tannin

The add-in "features" are rubbish and sound dreadful. You'd get tired of them after the first 10 minutes. 

The guitars themselves look as though they'd be dreadful too, but I did see a good player trying one out on You-tube a while back (was it Michael Watts?) and getting a remarkably decent sound out of it. I remain skeptical, a really good player can make even a poor guitar sound pretty good. 

.........

Yes. It was Michael Watts. Unplugged, it sounds competent and inoffensive. Rather dull - not a patch on the magnificent hand-made acoustics he usually plays, nor on any good factory guitar (Maton, Taylor, Martin, etc.) but perfectly playable. If you were stuck on a desert island with one, it would do.



With the FX turned on, it sounds interesting for the first 10 seconds, questionable as your ears adjust, then simply bad and tedious. Yes, even with Michael playing it.
 


Michael talks about it here. As always, he is gentlemanly and kind to it, but that's his nature. 



Overall, a carbon one might be worth considering for rough treatment (playing outdoors in the rain, desert heat, massive tropical humidity), 

Oh for the love of Mike! I just looked up what you pay for one of these.  I was expecting it to be several hundred dollars - $800 say £450, and wrote the above from that point of view. But they are $2000! (Around £1000!) 

At that price, you have two options. Either say no, or (better) say hell no! Buy something nice - and for the £1000 you'd spend on a Lava, there are plenty of very, very nice guitars to be had. A Furch Blue, for example, but there are many others.

Winny_Pooh

roundthebend said:

Winny_Pooh said:

I believe that's the same model I tried in GG a month ago. Utterly crap tone. I'd buy a GS mini if you want a compact acoustic.

What are you after exactly?

I don't know what I want exactly, maybe I don't even need anything. A smaller guitar that sounds good unplugged and plugged would be great, for gigs and even for taking on camping trips.

I'm drawn to the extra features of the Lava though. I know it probably doesn't sound like a £1200 guitar but then if it sounds OK and does all those things well, it might still be a good buy. It could be a great songwriting tool.

GS mini all the way. I've not tried the stock neo but you could pop in a K&K in there.

I gigged mine with a mag mic for years. 

roundthebend

What's a K&K?
Does the GS Mini have onboard pickup option?

DavidR

Take a look at Emerald Guitars carbon fibre instruments from Ireland too?

Tannin

Emeralds are in a different quality league. And a different price bracket too, of course.

BillDL

roundthebend said:

What's a K&K?

Although K&K have a few different types of instrument pickups, the most commonly recommended one is their "Pure Mini".

Piezo-ceramic discs encapsulated in a housing and stuck onto the underside of the bridge plate.  The piezo crystals produce an electrical signal when excited and deformed by vibration, and their output is strong enough to negate the need for a preamp.  As far as I understand the actual transducers inside are similar to or just the same as the thin brass discs with a circle of ceramic material on them that have been used as sounders for musical greetings cards among other things.  You can buy piezo-ceramic discs for hobbyist electronic projects for something like £1 each with wires already soldered to them, but it's quite intricate and difficult to attach the wires, so I guess you are really paying over £100 for the skills to wire them all together into an output socket.

roundthebend

From what I've read about the Taylor GS Mini e series, the Plus variant is the one to go for because the pickup/pre-amp on those is really excellent, whereas the standard e model has a poor combo.

I'm gonna try these out.

YorkieBarre

I bought a Lava Me 2 last year for about £350 and just use it when away, especially caravanning where the temperature can vary from freezing to 40 degrees in the sun (I leave it in the van and don’t bother bringing it home). This carbon fibre guitar is impervious to temperature and humidity and as such fits the bill for me admirably. The v2 has delay and reverb but no other ‘software’ that needs updating, no looper, no social media, which is exactly how I want it. I find the nut width too narrow for a few things, but I like how far up the fretboard you can play (it joins at the 17th fret from memory), but it’s a cheap and very effective solution to my specific needs. I wouldn’t touch the tech heavy v3 nor pay anything like £1k for a guitar like this.