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#1
04-30-2008, 07:51 AM
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Godin 5th Avenue
Picked one up two days ago from my local Daddy's Junky Music in Ma. It was a 4 month wait, but I finally got it although I may have been building it up in my mind too much during the wait.
It sold for $xxx and the first thing that I noticed was that it looked like a toy. The cognac burst I was dying to see looks like a kids guitar. It barely looks like real cherry. I work at a hardware store and the difference between real cherry hardwood floors and laminate is easy to spot. Godin said this is a laminate top, but I have doubts that this is anything more than compressed saw dust and glue with a very high resolution cherry picture under a thin finish. There is also no truss rod. Any warping over time will need a complete neck resetting, there will be no minor adjustments along the way. Aside from the visual let down the playing is not that bad. It feels like more of an electric archtop than an acoustic. The action is low across the frets and plays easy and the body is only 3 inches deep as opposed to my Fender acoustic which is 4. The tone is a very springy midrange. Very clear but lacking a little in bass and high end. It doesnt sing like a high quality acoustic but it does kick out some sound if your looking to have a more gut bucket blues kind of sound. I also tried it with a mic at my rehearsal space and it sounded great over the PA. With a tiny amount of basic EQ I got it sounding very full with no feedback in a small room. The real test will be my first show with it tonight. I had to convert it to lefty which was an easy flip and it's only been a couple of days so I'm still getting used to it. I like the guitar but like I said, I probably built it up too much in my mind as I was waiting for it. Last edited by Jamesk; 04-30-2008 at 12:02 PM. Reason: AGF Rule 2 in FAQ: no guitar price discussion. 
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#2
04-30-2008, 07:54 AM
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Hi James...
Hello and welcome to the forum. We are glad you jumped in and found a little ''gem'' of an archtop. Thanks for the report.
__________________
Baby #1.1 Baby #1.2 Baby #02 Baby #03 Baby #04 Baby #05 Larry's songs... …Just because you've argued someone into silence doesn't mean you have convinced them…
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#3
05-01-2008, 06:16 AM
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I didn't think these Godin guitars were going to be released until June! They look great in the press photos and I've always been a fan of the older factory archtops, even though the sound of the laminates is usually pretty dull and mid-rangey. Have you played any other archtop acoustics? How does the Godin compare? Like a lot of folks here, I've got my eye on one of these guitars... Tell us more.
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#5
05-01-2008, 01:38 PM
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The show went well with the guitar. It mic'd up nicely with a 58 on the lower f-hole. The sound was dark and had more presence than what I'm used to, but that's what I was going for anyway.
I think it's good for it's price range. It's not as pretty as I thought it was going to be, based on the press release photos, but for what it is it's not bad. Eventually I've move into the hand carved archtops, but this is my first one. Not exactly a beater but a step up from the Fender I've had forever.
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#6
05-08-2008, 06:23 PM
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Um... there is a truss rod
If you unscrew the little plate off the headstock, you'll see the guitar does have an adjustable truss rod. And the guitar is certainly not pressed sawdust with a hi-res photograph - if you look inside the body with a flashlight, you'll see the unfinished (real) wood. The top and bottom are bookmatched, with a virtually undetectable seam down the middle. I can't tell if it's molded ply or solid - but it's definitely real wood.
I can't speak to the burst finish, but the blonde is beautiful.
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