[Methos1979]

I'm going to try something a little different - a short and to-the-point guitar review. Those that know me and know my reviews will chuckle at this, but I'll try. Here's the quick and dirty: Cole Clark is an Australian guitar company. They believe in building guitars from sustainable woods and they designed the guitar around a killer pickup system that is made to be plugged in. In this they succeeded. Want more info? Google it!

I found myself in need of a killer, plugged in guitar. Something I could take to open mics and/or use live with little to no 'help' from external sources for my style of play. I've struggled immensely to find this. My yardstick these days is a guitar that can plug straight into my Bose S1 system and sound awesome with nothing but the very limited Bose EQ and whatever the guitar brings with it. I bought a used Cole Clark Angel 2 off Reverb from a guy in Australia. Great price, excellent shipping (only $75!) and fast shipping. He shipped it on Monday and I got it today - Saturday! Wow! This is a 2016 model in great shape, all blackwood body, Queensland maple neck, she oak fretboard and bridge and of course the incredible Cole Clark 3-way pickup system.

As advertised and reported in reviews here, this guitar's pickup system is the bomb! Plugged straight into my Bose S1 I am able to get a great tone dialed in with ease. The pickup system uses three things - a 6 element UST pickup and an SBT pickup with a blend knob, an internal mic with its own blend knob, a volume knob and three band EQ. Part of my problem as a fingerstyle player is my tone was always muddy without a lot of EQ. No more. I dial in a great tone for playing/strumming with a pick and if I want to switch over to fingerstyle I dial up the treble a bit, back off the bass a bit and increase the volume. Boom! Instant great tone.

The Angel is a GA body size guitar with a long scale neck. The carve is really nice, sort of a shallow C-ish shape neck that is not too thick, not too thin. The slighter narrower nut and string spacing make fingerstyle a little tight but still doable. It's a great strummer. The only thing I miss is a comfort bevel for my forearm but I'll hopefully acclimate. So if you're looking for a great plugged in tone from a guitar for performing, check out the Cole Clarks. The make a dread (the Fat Lady) the GA (Angel) and a small body (Little Lady), all with that great pickup system.

So, there you have it. Yes, this is a short review for me. Photos to follow.

Update!

So, it's just shy of couple weeks in with this guitar and I've gotten a lot of playing with it in so I thought I'd update with my thoughts and post a review video. I have yet to gig with the guitar but we did play an open mic last weekend. This is an open mic where I always struggle to get a good tone unless I bring my own preamp/EQ. As hoped for, I was able to quickly and easily get great tone playing fingerstyle. We ended up playing for about an hour (low turnout) so I was able to play a wide variety of songs which included strumming both with and without a pick and fingerstyle songs. Everything sounded great.

I've got the basic tweaks for the onboard pickup controls on lock. First thing I did was dial up the volume about halfway, bridge/soundboard knob around half, mic about half with treble and bass flat and mids dialed back a bit. This is my pick strumming default setting. Then I let the open mic host dial me in based on that as I strummed with a pick. Then as I changed to other songs I would dial up the volume to about 75%, dial up the treble a bit and back the bass off a bit leaving the mids alone. This would get me a great fingerstyle sound. I show this in the video below.

I was pleasantly surprised to how quickly a acclimated to the guitar's physical size. As mentioned above the guitar is generally larger than I prefer, has a longer scale and narrower nut width and string spacing than my ideal and lacks the comfortable body bevels and shaping of the Emeralds which as of late have been my preferred guitar. I seemed to acclimate to all these things rather quickly. Probably the two least liked things are the sharp edge my forearm rests against and the slightly narrow string spacing for certain fingerstyle songs. But nothing that kept me from performing well with the guitar.

I was also very pleasantly surprised to find that I did not get the extremely sore fingertips with the longer scale and therefore increased tension. This is due in part at least to the very low action the guitar came set up with. I am finding that I need to put much less pressure on the fretting hand. The downside is that if I'm strumming without a pick but simulating a pick with thumb and index finger pressed together tightly I do get string buzz on the low E. Rather than raise the action I am going to try to use this to make myself play lighter and with more precision. I am trying to play more with a pick whenever I can but there are still some songs that I strum that I cannot get a pick to work. I'm hoping that will come with time.

Anyway, to summarize, I am over-the-moon happy with this guitar from an amplified standpoint. We have a full 3-hour gig coming up in September and so I'm practicing solely with this guitar in anticipation of using it for the gig. I'll have the Emerald X10 nylon in the car as backup. But assuming all goes well between now and then I expect the Cole Clark to carry the night and give me what I need. So, if you're looking for a decent guitar that amplifies extremely well and gives you great on-the-fly tone regardless of your style of play, give the Cole Clark line of guitars serious consideration.

Update #2

Several weeks later and a few full gigs in and the guitar performed perfectly at the gigs. The sound was nothing short of outstanding through the EAE X6 digital mixer and into the Bose S1. I continue to be impressed. A second Cole Clark has been added as a backup and the other guitars are dwindling as they never get played and if I don't play them, they go on the block.

Here is a 20 minute video I did where I discuss the features and play the guitar a bit both acoustically and amplified using a pick, strumming and fingerstyle. Be warned - I talk throughout the video. A lot! For the best listening of how the guitar sounds, use high quality headphones.