View Single Post
  #23  
Old 12-29-2016, 10:41 AM
Truckjohn Truckjohn is offline
Registered User
 
Join Date: Feb 2016
Posts: 1,307
Default

For me - it's most Gibson USA made Dreadnoughts made between about 1980 and 2011 or 2012...

They were fairly expensive and generally very heavily built. The word was the corporate business owners were quite concerned about warranty return and brand image over musicality.

Now... You may have a different opinion of these if you play with quite heavy strings with a very heavy hand - such as playing out live unamplified in noisy bars, church, or bluegrass jams. 10 or 15 years of this sort of play seems to loosen them up enough that they sound pretty decent with normal medium strings.

The second "underwhelming" performer to me was the Ovations with the thick plastic dipped soundboards. Generally made between about 1987 and when the plant closed the 1st time. The exception is the 1994 Custom Collectors Edition - which was well made with a nice thin finish and it really sounded nice and loud. The early ones were great. Loud and responsive. Ironically - the ones with really thick finishes generally sound a lot better when the finishes craze really bad... But the factory figured that out and made them a lot more flexible so they wouldn't crack.

3rd... 1970's Martin dreads for all the reasons everybody already knows.
Reply With Quote