As promised, here is my review of the Emerald X10 Nylon Custom Woody guitar that I recently picked up from the illustrious EvanB! Anyone who has surfed the CF subforum for any amount of time knows that Evan has been a forerunner of the custom Emerald, having ordered some of the most thoughtful, interesting and beautiful customs out there. I just finished recording a 25-plus minute video review and demo which is uploading to YouTube as we speak and will magically appear at the bottom of this post. I cover quite a bit of the guitar in the video so I don't want to duplicate that in writing. But for those who don't like my often-rambling video reviews and just want the facts, I'll summarize here.
I'm pulling a lot of information from Evan's initial post by memory so please correct me where I'm wrong, Evan! This guitar is an Emerald custom, slim-body X10 nylon with a Royal Ebony woody veneer, level 1 Graphtech pickup system, exposed CF bridge, standard 25.5" neck scale, 1 7/8" nut width, 2 5/16" (?) string spacing, paddle headstock, and black (grey/silver?) CF back and sides. The guitar is beautiful, lightweight, sounds great unplugged (surprisingly) and even better plugged in. It came with a gorgeous Hiscox hard case and of course the mug.
Evan had ordered this as a thin-body guitar similar to a custom X7 that he had Emerald build for him earlier. When it arrived it was more of a slim-body in that it was much thicker than the X7 thin-body. Right away he knew it wasn't what he was looking for and would probably be letting it go at some point. I expressed an immediate interest as I was looking to add a nylon to my lineup and the slim-body design intrigued me and I loved the Royal Ebony woody veneer.
Nylon string guitars are a different beast from steel string guitars. They offer a mellower sound and the strings are fatter (the 3 high strings, at least) with much less tension which makes for more comfortable playing which is why so many new players start with nylon string acoustic guitars. There are challenges in playing a nylon when you are used to a steel string in that you really need to be cognizant of your attack pressure as it's very easy to overdrive them when amplified.
There is not much in the way of downsides to this guitar. The Graphtech saddle has sharp edges at the outer most corners which when palm-muting digs into your hand at the low E side but not so much as to cause too much of a problem. I figure that's easily rectified by breaking that edge with an emory board. Of course this is an active system so there is a battery to deal with. I honestly don't know how long the battery lasts with this level 1 system. Someone else out there who has owned an X10 for awhile might be able to chime in with that info.
I'm going to post a few photos I took of my three custom woody's below and then the video. I'll repost the actual Emerald vanity photos in a reply farther down after I get them from Evan's initial post. As for the video, I recorded it this morning shortly after rolling out of bed, still in my jam-jams complete with bed-head hair, gravelly voice and scattered thoughts. I apologize for that but I was excited to get this posted. When I played back the video I noticed that the amp was pretty loud and it overdrives the mobile phone mic's auto-leveling volume and seems to cause the guitar volume to drift when I'm playing with attack. Rest assured this is not the guitar but the phone and my early morning lack-of-dynamic control while playing. Someday I should probably invest in a nicer mic to record my reviews!
Straight off the boat, relaxing on the couch and still her her nice case:
The new gal with her 'brothers':
Anyhow, I'm thrilled to have this little beauty in my possession. Enjoy the video (or not) and let me know if you have any questions. Thanks again to EvanB and kramster for putting up with me for the last several months and ultimately allowing this special guitar to make the trip across the country to her new home. I promise I'll take good care of her. I'll be using the guitar this Sunday in her first public performance (since I've owned her, at least) and I'll report back on how she did.
Video: