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Old 11-20-2016, 06:04 PM
TheChicagoTodd TheChicagoTodd is offline
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Join Date: Mar 2016
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Part 3

When I got home, I wanted to hear the difference between the only guitar that I had been playing for the last 3 months and the El Capitan. If you remember, I traded in my Gibson EC-20 to help fund the El Capitan. This left me with my Journey OF660 to play while waiting for the El Cap for 3 months or so. Some of you know I’ve been a big proponent of the Journey and still am. So, when I brought the El Capitan home and played side-by-side, I could definitely tell the difference, but it didn’t seem as great as I thought it might be. I even asked my wife, and her response was that it sounded way louder and more “trebly”. This may seem like a red flag for some of you, but I really don’t think it was. I think that I simply played the Journey every day for over 3 months, my ears were very trained for that guitar. And again, since I’m not an accomplished player, some of these things may not stand out as much to me.

Well, since I had my new El Capitan, I put the Journey away in the closet. Fast forward about a month or so after I received my El Capitan, I finally decided to take guitar lessons and signed up at the Old Town School of Folk Music, a well-respected school in Chicago. I didn’t intend on bringing my El Capitan to class and figured I would instead be using my Journey. I pulled the Journey out of the closet and put ‘er together and tuned up, and what do you know.

No offense to Rob and the great folks at Journey (I’ve already professed my love for their instrument), but after playing my El Capitan for a month the Journey sounded like poop. Lol, I could not believe it! It was like night and day, which is probably what most you would think I would have been able to discern immediately. Well it hit me like a ton of bricks on that day. I still think my Journey is a fine instrument and stands well on its own, and it is what I bring to class, but the El Capitan is simply in another league. Night and day. This should have been expected IMHO, but still was a huge surprise to me that day.

One thing I will say about my initial playing on my new EC (now abbreviating El Capitan to EC), is that I had been playing my Journey on the “low action” saddle that Journey provides. That is something really cool that Journey does, they ship the OF660 with the normal or “high” saddle installed, but also provide a “low” saddle in the bag; now that’s a pretty cool feature (even though action is extremely subjective). I had been playing a little over 3 months on the low saddle on a shorter scale length guitar, so that action was really low. That’s why when I got my EC, the action seemed high to me.

I wanted to preserve the original action, so I purchased an additional saddle from Joe and then brought my EC and new saddle to the awesome guys at The Music Gallery and told them what I was looking for. The first thing they did was take some measurements and let me know the setup on the EC was spot on, and was industry standard and perfect, which is exactly what Joe told me. However, understanding my request, they did say that they could probably bring it down a bit. George is their tech guy (operates their Plek) and eventually he emerged from his magic room and said “See if you like this”. Wow!! Like butter! Super happy camper!

The only other thing I did was to replace the standard strap button near where the heel would be (there is a very small heel on the EC, probably fair to say no heel) and install a Schaller strap-lock. I keep a strap on the guitar now with the Schaller near where the heel would be and a Tapastring (thx forum!) on the end-pin jack. I will say that the original screw was very, very short. I let Joe know what I had done and if there would be any problem, but informed me that they have never had any problems and that the Ekoa is so rigid, it holds up a lot better than wood.

As mentioned, the EC has a very small heel (see pic) which allows easier access to the upper frets, something which is not terribly important to me, at least for now. The neck I believe was described as glossy and “Medium thickness Shallow V”, but it doesn’t really feel glossy to me, a little more like satin. Also, the neck has a nice well rounded feel which I really like, I probably just don’t know what a shallow “V” is supposed to be like. Again, watch the cool video to see how the neck and body are molded as a single piece, very cool stuff IMHO.

Little to no heel:


As mentioned, the fretboard and stainless steel frets seem very good to me, and both are polished to a high gloss. As you probably already know, the neck is hollow and open on the headstock end, which Blackbird claims allows for additional resonance, sustain, and volume. I do think the resonance and sustain seem good to me. You certainly can “feel” the guitar when you play it. I think Joe said that the headstock is very difficult to work with, it is possible on future models the slotted headstock may be replaced with a traditional headstock. When I first purchased the EC, I wasn’t sure about the slotted headstock, and I think the only instrument I had previously with one was a 1986 Epiphone Classical guitar. Now, even though I haven’t changed my initial strings yet, I do like the headstock just for aesthetic reasons. I think there was a thread on this forum regarding possible merits of slotted headstocks. The EC does come with a truss rod, for those who didn’t already know that.




Blackbird calls this a small jumbo. Indeed, part of what drew me to this guitar was that shape, as I’ve always admired the Gibson J200. However, I think the instrument feels smaller than it looks. The body of the guitar is also not very thick (4.5 inches per Blackbirds site), which I think helps in that regard.

Blackbird indicates that the nut and saddle are made of Graphtech, and the bridge of HPL. I think the bridge is pretty cool looking and has the Blackbird logo inlay…nice touch. The guitar seems to stay in tune very well which I’ll attribute to the headstock, tuner, nut and saddle combo (but I really have no idea what I’m saying… ;-)).





I think this was a rather interesting scenario, as Joe and I have spoken a few times since I took delivery of the instrument. First, there probably isn’t many of these out there period. Blackbird is relatively small shop, and I have no idea of what their output is, but I don’t think it’s that great. I’m really not sure how many EC’s have been built at this point. Additionally, Joe intimated to me that most of EC’s that they make go to dealers, and he may never hear from the eventual owners, whereas Joe and I have been having dialog before I even purchased, which is a bit of a unique scenario for him. I thought it was pretty cool that he called to follow up and see what I thought of the instrument.

Despite my inability to fully describe this instrument in a way that many of you would like, this little opus of an NGD is probably the most information that is out on the web other than info from Blackbird themselves. I hope that some of you at least finds this somewhat helpful, even if I am not fully able to do this incredible instrument justice. Oh, recently I also asked Joe about the strings that came on my instrument, and Joe told me that mine came with ClearTones, but that they are now stringing them with Elixirs. He did say that he felt the ClearTones produced a more vintage sound.

That leads me to my next point. [emoji14] NGD isn’t really an NGD without pic’s and sound samples right? Well I thought long and hard about sound samples. You see, I’m a beginner and as such...I kind of suck. Well, I’m just kidding a bit there, I think I’m doing ok and never put myself down (only for fun).

But consider this. There is such a lack of info out there on the El Capitan, would I be doing a disservice to Joe and the great team over at Blackbird and this incredible instrument by posting sound samples? Not to mention a bit embarrassing…. ;-)

My only recordings ever up to this point, have been sent to my brother-in-law who is at the same level of guitar as I am, and were done by placing my Samsung phone on a table in front of me while I played. Bad playing combined with fairly poor sound quality…hmmm…didn’t seem like the best scenario. I took the plunge and splurged on a Yeti Blackout edition USB microphone from Amazon. I hooked that up to my Surface tablet and downloaded Audacity, a free program to record sound.

The Yeti was placed in a corner of our bedroom at approximately the same height as the soundhole on my guitar. The Yeti was about 2-3 feet in front of the corner of the wall and in “Stereo” mode, with some bare wall for about 2 feet on either side and then drapes past that 2 foot mark on both sides. The soundhole for my guitar was about 2-3 feet directly in front of the Yeti. I only used Audacity to record and then to trim the clips. No processing whatsoever was used as these clips were intended to show what tones this particular guitar produces…..personally…I love the tones! So no effects were added.

Oh yeah... for all of these recordings I'm using the super secret prototype pic from our very own Forum sponsor Scott Memmer of Charmed Life Picks.

This microphone and setup greatly increased the quality of my recordings, but strangely did nothing for my playing. ;-)

Sent from my SM-G928V using Tapatalk

Last edited by Kerbie; 01-23-2020 at 08:57 PM. Reason: Removed masked profanity
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