[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.