Emerald X20 saves the day
 

As most here know from my recent post of The Christmas Miracle, I recently received my Emerald X20 Woody Custom. A few nights ago the reason for buying this guitar was realized in full.

I live in the Northeast. New Hampshire to be exact. For those not living in the northern part of the US right now or just not paying attention, it's freaking COLD up here. Like single digits during the day and negative numbers at night - without wind chill! And of course with that the humidity levels are also extremely low.

I'm battling with the heat and a humidifier just to keep the indoor temp at 64 and the humidity at 35. As such I put my beloved Martin 000-18GE Custom into it's hard case with some wet sponges in plastic bags with holes while I was away for a few days. I took my Emerald CF guitar with me.

I got home on Friday and my wife and I decided to go play a new open mic in town. I took the Martin out of it's hard case and was shocked to find the tuning had dropped almost another half step from the half step down I keep it in! As I tried to get it into tune it quickly became apparent that this was going to be a nightmare to get and keep in tune as the temperature fluctuated from case to house to case to car to club. No thanks.

I grabbed the CF guitar (still in it's case from the trip home) and pulled it out. Dead in tune. Threw it back in the case and tossed it into the very cold car for the trip to the club. Got there and ordered some wine and sat watching for a half hour and got the nod to go on. Pulled the guitar out of the case - dead in tune. Gawd, do I love CF guitars for that!

This was the first test of the Emerald live with it's K&K pickup. I played through an relatively crappy little Roland guitar amp (not an acoustic guitar amp) and while it didn't sound great, it did sound really pretty good all things considered. Our set went great and we got a ton of compliments on our sound.

The best part was after when I think every guitarist came up to me and asked me about the guitar with comments about how beautiful it was, and how cool it was (after telling them it was carbon fiber) as well as saying how great it sounded. I've gone to many an open mic with many a very nice custom guitar and no one ever commented on anything.

Just wanted to share a great story about a great open mic experience and for those that live in the freaking arctic (or desert, or jungle, or fill-in-the-blank) and don't already have one, you might want to consider a carbon fiber guitar as your backup to your nice wood guitar!

Nice story, thanks for sharing. Your experience duplicates what seems to be a common one for carbon fiber instrument owners. A few months ago, after a set in my village park, a man wanted to buy my X10-OSN and was pretty persistent about it. I referred him to this forum.

Or as their only guitar! Thanks for sharing!

Currently, after having over a dozen RainSongs, I'm currently carbonless but my next carbon guitar will most likely be an Emerald X20 Artisan in Emerald Green. I've yet to decide on a pickup system for it.

http://emeraldguitars.com/wp-content...n-683x1024.jpg

Great story...makes we want to get another CF guitar just in case.... or outa it's case.

Amen. My CA OX Raw arrived shipped from AZ to MD three weeks ago in tune and I haven't tuned it yet.

I am also intrigued by my X20 staying in tune. I suspect when it needs the tiny tweaks, it is the temperature change affecting the strings, not the guitar itself.

The temperature when I left the house this morning was a balmy 16°. Shorty doesn't even flinch- A440 and ready to rock 'n' roll.

Try doing that with the wood guitar!

I used to attend the Acoustic Alaska Guitar Camp outside of Anchorage every year. My Rainsong was the only guitar round the campfire that did not require constant re-tuning. We might start out at 65° right after dinner and continue jamming well into the night, down to 40°F. Then there is the question of how close you are to the fire. Lots of differential temperatures happening in that situation....

My X20 drifts a bit with temperature changes, but not as much as the X7 does.

My theory is that it's the strings that drift, not the CF guitar.

I live in New England as well and am very tempted to get a carbon fiber guitar. I have a lot of very high end classicals and a limited edition taylor. While they get to live in a climate controlled room 95% of the time, I'd love to have a guitar that can be in a car in sub-freezing temperatures or a building heated with natural gas that drops below 20% relative humidity in the winter or when it's hot and humid in the summer.

I've not noticed that with any of my carbon fiber guitars. After nearly a year in the case, the Shorty came out in tune. Well, until I put new strings on it on Monday. Same with the X7 and the X20 - they both arrived from Ireland in tune. I cart the X7 around a lot more than the X20.

For the record, when I sit down to play each day, the first thing I do is check the tuning... the wood guitars generally need to be tweaked, rarely so with the CF guitars. Not a big deal either way. Tuning is part of playing.

My guitar room stays pretty constant in temperature and humidity. The wood ones get to live in there, the carbon fiber ones get to see more of the world. And, they all get tuned as necessary. ;)

In my experience, short scale instruments have less tolerance to teeny variations in string tension.
I had a Baby Taylor once that was a swine to keep in tune.
My X7 holds up pretty well , I think I may sometimes accidently move a tuner when getting it in and out the gig bag.

Worldly CF...nice.. they get to come out and play to be played more.

My new electric thin-bodied X7-OSN arrived in tune. Never seen anything like it!