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-   -   Lamaq Acoustics (https://www.acousticguitarforum.com/forums/showthread.php?t=61472)

814guy 04-08-2005 07:11 AM

Lamaq Acoustics
 
I just picked up a Lamaq dreadnought (cedar top/rosewood b/s) as my beater. It was real steal and I cannot believe how good it is compared to other guitars in the price range. It sounds great and, from what I can tell, has a solid top and back. It also has a Fishman pickup in it. The quality is amazing for the price.

I know that all the jigs etc for making the guitars were developed here in the UK and then sent to China where the guitars were constructed but I cannot find out many details about the guitars themselves. There is a website (www.dgcdistribution.com) but it doesn't say alot. There is a label in side which is signed by Antonio Lamaq, who I believe makes high quality classical guitars.

Anybody know anything about them?

Chris

Lamaq 10-27-2005 12:47 PM

I know about me!
 
What is it you want to know?

stardust168 06-20-2006 09:10 AM

Lamaq
 
I too have just recently played a Lamaq guitar and was very impressed with the quality. it was a GAL 5990e, I believe. Does anyone own one or know much about them? I would like to buy it, but feel a bit nervous as I know nothing about them. The price was a little over £xxx??

davidkilpatrick 12-20-2006 02:31 PM

I've just paid £xx for a factory 2nd Lamaq cutaway jumbo (model as yet uncertain) from an eBay seller in County Durham UK. The Fishman Classic 4 pickup and preamp normally costs more than the £xxx price inc post, and I need a neater pickup rig than a Shadow I bought from Thommann (huge great big preamp weighs tons) for my Washburn Parlour. If the Lamaq - which has a pinless bridge and Lowden style twin saddle - is any use as a player, I'll not cannibalise it. But if the Fishman has twin undersaddle elements it's even more of a silly bargain, as I'm always in the market for bargain used Lowdens. My current Lowden is a very expensive S35C ziricote/cedar, the first cutaway small body made by the new works, and I don't take it to sessions. The Lamaq is just the right price for pub use. This vendor on eBay current has a stack of new Lamaqs for £xxx and 2nds with small finish marks for xx.

Raystrack 12-20-2006 05:53 PM

Impulse Buy
 
Thanks to this thread I've just looked up ebay and bought a GAL5190. I've been hunting for some time for a cedar topped guitar with some warmth and while I don't buy unseen any more, you can't go wrong for £xxx (surely ?).

davidkilpatrick 12-21-2006 06:01 AM

The model I have bought turns out to be the GAL5990e as mentioned above for £xxx, so at £xx, definitely can't go wrong. I wonder if Lamaq shut up shop and these are liquidation clearance, the prices look so low. I can't find any Google refs to new Lamaq models and reviews generally date to 2003.

Raystrack 12-21-2006 09:17 AM

Yes, I also tried Googling around for some info. first: without success.

I expect the weak spot for me will be the sapele fingerboard. I only like ebony - but hey, £xxx with a Fishman!.

I've had a mail to say it's been despatched already but I don't know what method so guess I have to stay in until it arrives - for £10 I guess that's dear old Royal Mail :rolleyes:

davidkilpatrick 12-21-2006 02:47 PM

Here's the rest of the story. The vendor is Antonio Lamaq himself (his full name is Marc Antonio Lamaq) and he has spent most of the last three years at the Chinese factory which made these. He been troubleshooting and refining their operation. In 2007 he will have an entirely new range and he normally would never consider selling on eBay. He decided to dispose of a few remaining instruments to clear out his earlier production of design which will soon be 'old' stock, and to do so before Christmas on eBay at very low prices. You and me and anyone else who found them and trusted them has just ended up buying guitars not from some liquidation, or a dealer getting cleared of bought-in 2nds, but from the designer himself set up by him. Lamaq charges upwards of £10,000 for his own hand made classicals. Methinks that whatever these turn out to be like, they will have been a bargain.

davidkilpatrick 12-22-2006 01:10 PM

End of this part of the story - my GAL5990E midi-jumbo cutaway arrived 30 minutes ago, perfectly packed, by carrier - 6.30pm on the Friday before Christmas is not bad! This is the £xx '2nd' and all it needs to look like a '1st' is a John Pearse armrest, since the area of finish damage is exactly where that will cover it permanently and perfectly. The action is set very low especially on the bass E but it's still fine despite D'Aquisto strings which have very dead basses. Before changing strings and raising the bass-side split saddle by a tiny amount, I tuned up and played a while. It's very accurate indeed, perfect intonation, and the sound is exactly what you would expect from a tight-grained cedar top, apparently solid rosewood body both back and sides, and this size of body. It has a slimmer (43mm) nut width than I am used to with the strings set well in from the edge, which is purfled but not bound and has well-trimmed frets and quite a small fingerboard radius with a very deliberate compensation of the bass side for string movement. The neck is very deep, almost a semicircle profile, and I was surprised to find this made barre chords easy - I've been playing shallow profile wide necks for ages, and this one has me surprised, because it's proving easier to play.

The general finish and internal stuff is a bit basic - purfling is all hand done, and a bit complex with extra doubled lines and things, and abalone letter L offset fret markers, abalone rosette etc. It looks like Chinese work with small inaccuracies and tiny bits of fill or width variations, and the bridge is quite roughly finished (planed and sanded but hardly brought to perfection). However, the geometry is accurate and the fit is solid. The frets don't look very even but there's not a single bad one despite the low action. The Fishman has a three-screw flanged endpin jack/strap button, a cheaper product than regular endpin jacks and the same type as used by Artec's pickup on my Romanian zouk imports. But the sound with the split saddle pickup and the Fishman Classic 4 preamp is great, well balanced and just right at neutral EQ.

All in all - an AMAZING solid rosewood/cedar for £xx and disturbingly well capable of giving my £xxxx Lowden a hard time. The sound is not as full but if anything it's sweeter, has more air in it, and the guitar is much lighter all round.

It's quite possible the second guitar I have bought from Lamaq - a small body, ultra slim, cutaway flamed maple with maple top acoustic electric - may arrive tomorrow. At least one of my friends has bought a dread today and if it matches what I have just received, he'll be very happy.

David

Raystrack 12-24-2006 07:04 AM

I received my small bodied cutaway within 2 days of paying for it. Well packaged as well - via Parcel Force. Even a cheery postman who said 'Here's something to twang' as he handed it over - must be Christmas!

It's actually about the same body size as my Taylor 712 but the short scale length and lightness make it feel more like a parlour or travel guitar. I note your comments on the strings and I will change these and see what it's like - it's very (too) bright but the bass string is dead. It's pretty good through my acoustic amp though and the Fishman works well.

The action is too high at the nut but once again for £xx it's a steal. For personal preference It will cost me about £80 to have the frets lowered and the action reduced.

The cedar top and and Indian rosewood are lovely and it has a nice abalone rosette and twin purfling around the body and up the neck. The 'second' designation is due to some discolouration in the top laquer about the size of the top of my thumb and there's splashes of paint on the inside of the guitar.

Overall I'm a bit disappointed but shouldn't be.

davidkilpatrick 12-24-2006 07:18 AM

Mine has good nut action, and a bone nut as far as I can tell (either that or a very heavily filed, sawed and sanded bit of solid hard plastic). The jumbo frets are a bonus for me. I find they play very easily and they offer years of proof against wear. The action was set low overall, about 2.7mm bass 1.9mm treble, and I raised the bass with a layer of heavy metal foil. Plugged in, the bass E is far too loud on my AER but I've had this problem with this amp before. Tapping the saddles indicates good 'even' seating.

Reaction at our folk session was - another new guitar Davie? One of your handmades? I made no comment and let a few people try it, it was generally liked, and the guess from players was £300-400 guitar. A few fell off seats when I revealed the actual price. I wait to see what the small slim body model is like when deliveries resume. I see that Lamaq has now sold out of his entire Christmas sale stock except a couple of basic level sapele/spruce dreads and a bunch of £65 classicals in the same wood combo.

Lamaq 01-07-2007 02:55 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Raystrack (Post 1070751)
Yes, I also tried Googling around for some info. first: without success.

I expect the weak spot for me will be the sapele fingerboard. I only like ebony - but hey, £xxx with a Fishman!.

The fingerboards are always Indian Rosewood. :)

davidkilpatrick 01-08-2007 06:16 PM

Well, for me it's two down, two to go, Marc! My son grabbed the GAL5990E and was really crestfallen on Christmas Day when he realised I had not emailed him about the eBay sales. It was his birthday two days later, and I handed the guitar over, with a new bone bass saddle which fixed the balance better. He's really delighted. My small ultra-slim body all maple 'stage' type electro acoustic, with cheaper piezo-crystal pickup system, arrived and turned out to be a stormer. The wood is beautifully flamed, intonation was accurate, and what sounded a bit quacky and harsh at home was exactly right through the AER at our session on Friday. The guitar is a peculiarity - no real curve on the back or top, some oddly mitred fingerboard and headstock binding, extremely thin sides and a very shallow body, very thin maple top as well. But it projects amazingly well, and has plenty of bass and sweet, not thin, trebles. I restrung and shimmed the bass saddle; the saddle slots are not really deep enough for the thick piezo USTs, but even so, the saddle doesn't tilt and intonation has stayed fine. I also removed the big preamp module and got a Jap saw inside and tidied up the appalling mess made of the braces, literally hacked to fit the preamp, and it was touching some wood splinters and rattling. Took two minutes to trim neatly for a good 1mm clear of the hardware. The inside, before the hacking, was well finished without excess glue. The preamp is too large, and the kerfing has been cut to fit it. I guess this is the kind of production issue Marc will be addressing for 2007 models.

This tiny guitar has amazingly good articulation - very fast and well separated - and extreme projection/presence. It's a bit like some guitar-body bouzoukis. Unplugged, I could easily be the loudest and clearest 'voice' and had to lay off when using a sharkfin (amazing on very crisp guitars like this). Plugged in, roll off the treble a bit and it could be mellow.

I made a recording, which hit No 1 in Soundclick Acoustic Folk within 24 hours of putting it up, and was at No 14 in the entire Acoustic genre:

http://www.soundclick.com/pro/view/0...SongID=4855476

Over the weekend I checked Marc's new sales, ordered myself another £xx Fishman-equipped small body rosewood/cedar cutaway, then found he'd got resonator guitars at £xxx including a hard case... so I bought one as well.

I'll let you know how these turn out.

David

cotten 01-08-2007 06:48 PM

From a moderator's perspective, it would have been easier to just remove this entire thread, rather than have to edit nearly every post for violations of our No. 2 Rule: No guitar price discussion. And, no offense intended to anyone, but the AGF is not to be used for commercial gain. Only our Charter Manufacturers are allowed to represent their businesses on this forum, and even they can't say they've got a bunch of stuff for sale cheap.

Still, we always enjoy finding and talking about good buys in guitars, so I just x'ed out the prices and removed one post that amounted to a friendly ad. Hopefully, that's all the moderating this thread will need. If not, we'll close it and move on the the next topic.

Thanks for everyone's understanding and cooperation.

cotten

davidkilpatrick 01-08-2007 07:22 PM

I'm sorry - this was my fault. It was a hunt for info on these instruments which brought me here, and I was unaware of AGF despite a decade or on a certain usenet group, and I did not read rules or FAQs just pitched in. Thanks for your tolerance, in many forums I know this thread would have been removed from sight. The prices, I guess, never needed to be so exact. I did not alert Marc Lamaq to the thread, by the way, he must have done a bit of Googling himself.


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