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Old 05-14-2019, 03:45 AM
Spacep0d Spacep0d is offline
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I gotta say, the black bridge looks aces. Better than the pre-vis of the amber bridge. Another poster was correct in that it gives the guitar much-needed contrast. Beautiful wood veneer on that X7! I've been looking at an X7 myself. The only thing I worry about is worse mic bleed when recording vocals whilst playing.




Quote:
Originally Posted by Methos1979 View Post
Updated a second time for gig report - scroll down to post #41.

Updated for playing time, string change and playing amplified - scroll down to bottom.

Well, the wait is over. I received my latest custom woody Emerald today just six days after it shipped from Ireland! Compared to last year that is astounding especially considering the time of year - Christmas! I only have had the very shortest of time to play with this guitar today so rest assured that I'll be putting it through it's paces over the next few weeks and I'll update here as I go. But since the cat was let out of the bag a few days ago with the video I thought I'd go ahead and post my initial thoughts as well as, of course, the awesome photos.

First, a little bit on how this guitar came to be. After getting my custom woody X20 last year (which is awesome) I said to myself that the only way I'd likely order another one is if two things happened: A new guitar that was smaller than the X20 but bigger than the (then) current X7 was introduced and second, a woody veneer that blew me away showed up. When I saw Jeff's Ruby Cross veneer I thought, WOW! I loved it but thought he had it upside down thinking that the broad part of the sapwood would look better on the bottom. Of course that would have negated his vision of the cross.

Then in May the new lineup was announced. The change to the X7 looked like it was exactly what I was considering - smaller than the X20 but very much similar to it. I started thinking, if I could get a cool veneer like Jeff's, plus have a custom neck identical to my X20 (24.6" and soft V shape) then that might be worthwhile. One thing I'm not a big fan of is the offset bridge point on the woody's. Sure, it's the Emerald signature but having that offset point on book-matched wood veneer tops just looks odd to me. I wondered if they could do something about that.

I mulled it over for a few months and on the last day of July I reached out to Emerald with my thoughts. Kevin was out so it was Alistair himself that answered the email and we spent two days going back and forth on my vision for a custom woody X7. He said he had another 'slice' of that veneer and that of course he could do the longer scale and custom soft V neck and he could also do a custom bridge with the point shifted to the middle. He actually offered me two options, rounded bridge or the point. I figured the point would look cool. So I pulled the trigger and placed the order.

Now, onto my thoughts. First of all, the new design of the X7 is incredible! Alistair hit it out of the park with this one. The guitar is very lightweight and resonant. It's actually louder than my X20! I'm not kidding! I didn't think I'd like or particularly care for the new cutaway back but even that is extremely comfortable and the access to those upper frets is perfect and much needed on this shorter-scaled guitar. The guitar hangs on me just right. Perfect. The feel is incredible. The scale is just right. I have yet to plug it in but I'm sure the K&K will function/perform the same as the X20 and the Martin. But I'll update on that later.

There are only two concerns I have on the guitar. Due to a miscommunication between Alistair and I the custom bridge was not tinted Amber per my request. We had a LOT of back and forth about this custom bridge and with so many emails over such a short period of time I'm not surprised this was missed. The bridge doesn't look bad and I love the pinless and centered-point features but I think had the bridge been tinted Amber it would have been that much better. Alistair said he can respray it if I want to return it and I might but I'm going to keep it until after the holidays to avoid the holiday shipping hassles and see if it grows on me.

The second concern was that the soft V shape is significantly less than the X20. I'll admit I'm overly sensitive to neck shape carves and I'm very used to and love the X20. The X7 is much more rounded with less soft V. To me it feels like a stock Emerald shaped neck. Alistair said this is due to the basic different geometry of the X7 neck vs the X20 necks and he assured me he did in fact perform a lot of shaping on the neck. Again, I'm hopeful that a few weeks of playing and I'll acclimate to it because unlike the bridge tinting, the neck shape cannot be changed. Time will tell.

I'll say that the newly designed X7 perfectly melds all the best (and then some) between the X20 and the old-style X7. It's small enough to still be considered a travel guitar but has the playing ergonomics and sound of a much larger guitar. It's very similar to a 0 or 00 size guitar in feel but with even better (louder) tone. The X7 came in a grey and green Emerald gig bag. I was excited about this as I prefer that color combo to the grey and blue of my X20. Also, of course, I got the mug.

Okay, enough blathering. I'm going to upload some photos. First a few of the unboxing and then the glamour photos which, as always, are nothing short of astonishing. Just like with my X20, the look of the guitar under lights/flash is incredible while under average/ambient light it's much darker. I was hoping that the much wider sapwood stripe would make to whole thing lighter but it is not. As someone else posted here just the other day, I think any future custom woody's considered will be a lighter wood veneer. But I just haven't seen any that I like as much as the dark ones with the sapwood.

Btw, during the wait for the guitar I sent an email to Jeff (owner of the Ruby Cross) to tell him of my plan to use a veneer similar to his but on a much smaller guitar and oriented in the opposite direction and I hoped he wouldn't mind the similarity to his. He replied immediately that of course he did not mind and was looking forward to seeing the final product. As always, AGF'ers are a class act.

More to come.

Update:

So I'm a few days in. Playing the guitar acoustically for a few days I've acclimated to the neck shape. I still don't like it as much as I like the X20 neck, but I definitely don't hate it either. What I do continue to really like is the guitar itself. The small size, the light weight, the resonance and ease with which the notes seem to leap off the guitar. It's very much like playing a high-end 00 12-fret guitar like the Santa Cruz ones I used to own. My concern with that is that there might be some amplification challenges because of it. And there are.

I plugged in today and played initially through my Boss VE8 with the stock EQ that I've got dialed in for the X20 and the Martin. Both those guitars are close enough in body size that I can get away with the same EQ with the X20 being significantly hotter. But not so with the X7. I played both through the Bose S1 and the QSC k8.2. Initial listens were awful. In fact, it almost sounded like there was something wrong with either the K&K pickup or maybe the cable or Boss. Since I had the effect on both amps I knew it wasn't them. I didn't want to change the EQ on the Boss VE8 just in case I need to use the X20 for this weekends gig after all. Dialing in EQ on the VE8 is not an easy on-the-fly at-the-gig thing. And even if I do use the X7 this weekend there's also a string issue that might lead to a sudden need to change over to the X20. More on that in a minute.

In addition to the weird buzzing/rattling tone I was getting on some strings (usually the G & B) there was also a distinct mid-range boxiness that I don't hear with the X20. It's very much like the tone shaping challenges I dealt with back when I was playing 00 12-fretters. So I chalk this up to it being a body size thing. Fortunately having owned and gigged with 00 12-fretters for a few years I'm well versed in how to compensate and tame for this issue. So the first thing I decided to do was to put my Headway EDM-1 preamp in front of the signal. Instant great tone. So it is just a EQ thing. This will work well for the gigs as it allows me the ability to use the VE8 with the EQ settings as-is and then if I have any issues where I have to change guitars it will be a snap.

Once I had the tone dialed in for the X7 it was a joy to play. The light weight and resonant tone made for a really fun practice. I'm definitely going to gig with this on Sunday but I'll have the X20 there just in case. This is due to a string changing issue. I've written about that on a post about the Emerald pinless bridge questions posted recently so you can check that out at the link below. My comments start on post #11. Suffice to say that changing strings on a pinless bridge was not as easy as I thought it would be. Much of this is likely because I have no experience with them. Hopefully that turns out to be the case in the long run.

But to summarize, the guitar continues to impress mightily.

Emerald Pinless Bridge Thoughts
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