NGD: Emerald X7 Custom Woody - Updated with 'deep dive' thoughts a few weeks in

[Methos1979]

Okay, so I'm nearly a month into owning this fine guitar and I thought I'd update this post with things I encountered, both good and bad, and what I did to rectify anything if needed. Ergonomically I've REALLY become enamoured of this guitar. It's just... FUN sized! The compact body with comfort curves and bevels plus the short scale make for a very easy playing experience. Tonally (unamplified) it is very pleasant and even across the strings with no 'boxiness' that I recalled with my last v3 X7. I remember that one had a sympathetic G string vibration that created this boxiness in that guitar. Not so much with this one, thankfully.

Early on during a string change I noted the headstock had a bit of a 'twist' to it when looking down it that I don't remember seeing on my first v3 X7 or quite frankly any of the other five Emeralds I've owned previously. I posted here asking others if they noticed the same thing and eventually most chimed in that while they never noticed it before either, upon inspection there is in fact a slight twist. So this is apparently by design, thankfully. The headstock on these X7's are very small and the mini tuners are packed in there. It's hard to get a headstock tuner to stay on but thankfully one of mine does fit well. The tuners (Gotoh 510 mini's) are excellent with just the right ratio of 18:1.

Next up was the pickup system, the LR Baggs Element VTC. Initially I noted an unevenness with the A, D and G strings being slightly subdued in volume which didn't bother me all that much. However, after the first string change this became ridiculously uneven with the low E, B and high E becoming VERY loud while the others were very low. I did a whole other post on that and was all but sure I would need to swap out the pickup system for something else. I ended up getting a new saddle and after a lot of sanding and then adding some foil tape in certain areas I managed to get the volume even across all strings and now the Element is serviceable enough to remain.

One good thing that came from all that work on the string balance/saddle was that it required me to remove and reinstall the strings probably ten times in the span of just a few days. This forced me to really work with the pinless bridge. The Emerald pinless bridge system is not one I'm particularly fond of from my last v3 X7. But after working with it all those times I found a method of removing and re-installation that works well using the small screwdriver that I keep in my kit for tightening the small phillips screws on tuner buttons. It's the perfect size and length for sliding down into the hole to help guide and seat the ball into the slot and keep it there while bringing the strings up to tension.

Last up is performance. I've really bonded with this guitar. I'm not sure if it's just new guitar-itis but I just can't seem to put it down. One thing I was delighted with is the volume of this guitar. It's quite loud for such a small body. Previously I was using my IRIS DF for our all-acoustic shows and the Cole Clark for amplified shows. Just for giggles I used the X7 at last week's four all-acoustic shows and it was great. Plenty loud enough, nearly as loud as the IRIS DF, which is really saying something as that is a very loud guitar. Now that I've got the Element pickup system issue resolved I spent some time dialing in a great tone on the EV30M and I'm planning to play some amplified shows this week with it.

It will be interesting to see how long the love affair lasts. The X7 was bought primarily to replace the excellent RainSong Black Ice dread as a backup guitar that can live in a too-hot or too-cold trunk for gigs to be used as needed should one of the primaries fail. But right now the roles have been reversed and those two guitars are the backups to the X7. The X7 has stainless steel frets so it's nice to know that I won't be wearing down the frets of my IRIS or Cole Clark with our busy gigging schedule. And I love the relatively tiny gig bag the X7 travels in. Anyway, I just wanted to update this post for others down the road looking for opinions of the Emerald X7. I'll post a few more photos showing some of the issues encountered above.

[Methos1979]

More photos!

One thing I forgot to mention above, I added some center detent marks (using nail polish) on the Element VTC dials showing visual center. The tone dial already has a physical detent while the volume does not. But it's nice to have the visual to see where center is. This is important for me because I dial up the treble and volume when I switch to fingerstyle for the delicate ballads so it's nice to be able to see at a glance where the mid-way point is!



The first string change I tried to use just an old bridge pin to hold the ball in but it's just too fat and short (not unlike me!) to work well.



This small screwdriver on the other hand works perfectly!



The headstock with the slight twist:





The foil tape applied under the A, D and G strings. When all was said and done there were more pieces added but I didn't get photos of that.

[js303]

Thanks for taking the time to write in such detail. Very helpful and much appreciated!

[Earl49]

Nice review! I'm glad that the pickup issues have been ironed out - or "aluminum-ed" out as the tape may be. I had good luck changing strings using a golf tee on the pinless version of Emeralds. The tee seemed to guide the strings nicely and left a large flanged head that was easily grabbed for removal. Plus it could happily live in the string tool kit, and would be simple to replace if needed someday. But whatever works.

Acoustically, your comments support what I have heard before. The newer larger v3 X7 from post-2018 is closer to the X20 in overall loudness and tone than the prior v2 X7's were. That makes sense given the relative sizes of each model. My wife happens to really like the petite size of her v2 koa, so we'll stay with it. My hope is to play a v3 someday out of curiosity. I'm pretty sure there won't be any new purchases -- the herd is pretty well defined now.

[David Eastwood]

Seems like an awful lot of trouble to go to. You could have just got something off Craigslist for $60 or so

Seriously, the pictures of the tape under the saddle are extremely helpful. I’m definitely going to try this on my X20 next time I restring it, to try to tame the bass heaviness.

Also, apart from the fact that I can think of no logical reason for it, I’m not convinced that the neck twist is actually real. I suspect it’s an optical illusion based on the asymmetry of the headstock.

[SpruceTop]

Originally Posted by Methos1979

Okay, so I'm nearly a month into owning this fine guitar and I thought I'd update this post with things I encountered, both good and bad, and what I did to rectify anything if needed. Ergonomically I've REALLY become enamoured of this guitar. It's just... FUN sized! The compact body with comfort curves and bevels plus the short scale make for a very easy playing experience. Tonally (unamplified) it is very pleasant and even across the strings with no 'boxiness' that I recalled with my last v3 X7. I remember that one had a sympathetic G string vibration that created this boxiness in that guitar. Not so much with this one, thankfully.

Early on during a string change I noted the headstock had a bit of a 'twist' to it when looking down it that I don't remember seeing on my first v3 X7 or quite frankly any of the other five Emeralds I've owned previously. I posted here asking others if they noticed the same thing and eventually most chimed in that while they never noticed it before either, upon inspection there is in fact a slight twist. So this is apparently by design, thankfully. The headstock on these X7's are very small and the mini tuners are packed in there. It's hard to get a headstock tuner to stay on but thankfully one of mine does fit well. The tuners (Gotoh 510 mini's) are excellent with just the right ratio of 18:1.

Next up was the pickup system, the LR Baggs Element VTC. Initially I noted an unevenness with the A, D and G strings being slightly subdued in volume which didn't bother me all that much. However, after the first string change this became ridiculously uneven with the low E, B and high E becoming VERY loud while the others were very low. I did a whole other post on that and was all but sure I would need to swap out the pickup system for something else. I ended up getting a new saddle and after a lot of sanding and then adding some foil tape in certain areas I managed to get the volume even across all strings and now the Element is serviceable enough to remain.

One good thing that came from all that work on the string balance/saddle was that it required me to remove and reinstall the strings probably ten times in the span of just a few days. This forced me to really work with the pinless bridge. The Emerald pinless bridge system is not one I'm particularly fond of from my last v3 X7. But after working with it all those times I found a method of removing and re-installation that works well using the small screwdriver that I keep in my kit for tightening the small phillips screws on tuner buttons. It's the perfect size and length for sliding down into the hole to help guide and seat the ball into the slot and keep it there while bringing the strings up to tension.

Last up is performance. I've really bonded with this guitar. I'm not sure if it's just new guitar-itis but I just can't seem to put it down. One thing I was delighted with is the volume of this guitar. It's quite loud for such a small body. Previously I was using my IRIS DF for our all-acoustic shows and the Cole Clark for amplified shows. Just for giggles I used the X7 at last week's four all-acoustic shows and it was great. Plenty loud enough, nearly as loud as the IRIS DF, which is really saying something as that is a very loud guitar. Now that I've got the Element pickup system issue resolved I spent some time dialing in a great tone on the EV30M and I'm planning to play some amplified shows this week with it.

It will be interesting to see how long the love affair lasts. The X7 was bought primarily to replace the excellent RainSong Black Ice dread as a backup guitar that can live in a too-hot or too-cold trunk for gigs to be used as needed should one of the primaries fail. But right now the roles have been reversed and those two guitars are the backups to the X7. The X7 has stainless steel frets so it's nice to know that I won't be wearing down the frets of my IRIS or Cole Clark with our busy gigging schedule. And I love the relatively tiny gig bag the X7 travels in. Anyway, I just wanted to update this post for others down the road looking for opinions of the Emerald X7. I'll post a few more photos showing some of the issues encountered above.

Scott, if other X7 owners have also noticed a headstock twist, perhaps it's designed that way to help create better seating of the strings over the nut?

Over a dozen years ago, I ordered a RainSong JM3000 12-String that sounded wonderful but after a day or so I noticed that when sighting down the fingerboard from the end of the headstock, the plane of the headstock had a very noticeable 5-degree rotation away from being parallel with the plane of the fingerboard. I could also see that the company had cut the bottom of the nut on an angle to accommodate the headstock rotation. This headstock twist didn't affect the tuning, tone, or playability of the guitar but it did bother me some. Of the over dozen RainSongs I've owned, I haven't seen any headstock rotation like that in my circa 2009 JM-3000.

The twist on your X7's headstock is noticeably less than that of my long-gone RainSong JM-3000 as the RainSong JM3000 had about half again more twist than your Emerald X7.

[Methos1979]

Originally Posted by SpruceTop

Scott, if other X7 owners have also noticed a headstock twist, perhaps it's designed that way to help create better seating of the strings over the nut?

Over a dozen years ago, I ordered a RainSong JM3000 12-String that sounded wonderful but after a day or so I noticed that when sighting down the fingerboard from the end of the headstock, the plane of the headstock had a very noticeable 5-degree rotation away from being parallel with the plane of the fingerboard. I could also see that the company had cut the bottom of the nut on an angle to accommodate the headstock rotation. This headstock twist didn't affect the tuning, tone, or playability of the guitar but it did bother me some. Of the over dozen RainSongs I've owned, I haven't seen any headstock rotation like that in my circa 2009 JM-3000.

The twist on your X7's headstock is noticeably less than that of my long-gone RainSong JM-3000 as the RainSong JM3000 had about half again more twist than your Emerald X7.

Yes, the general consensus is that the minor 'twist' of the headstock is as designed. I have noticed no issues from it. It continues to be my favorite guitar that I'm using for both amplified and acoustic shows. Love the size. My poor IRIS DF and Cole Clark TL are not getting much love right now!