They're not bad instruments. They can certainly work as an acoustic archtop should. Here's one doing just fine:
An older, deeper box will be louder, for sure. Or a Loar 600/700, if bashing out some rhythm is your bag. Or if you want the more "polite" modern acoustic archtop sound, Eastman is the way to go on a budget.
As for the pickup and missing it, really depends on what you want to do. I have the single pickup version, it's a great guitar--I keep my action low for plugged in playing so the acoustic volume suffers...archtops are guitars of compromise in many situations, there's no "swiss army archtop," I suppose.
But the quality and workmanship on the Godins is just great. Certainly worth checking out.
|