Originally Posted by crw
As promised, a followup from my earlier post here.
So - ordered both the Oliver from Orangewoods LA office, and an FG800 from GC on a Friday. The Oliver arrived on my doorstep the following Monday, the FG got to my local store that Wednesday. The Yamaha came in a cocoon of bubble wrap inside a box, with paper stuffed here and there to hold it steady. The Oliver was in a gig bag in a box. No padding or stuffing anywhere, but the box was fairly heavy cardboard and there was no damage. The following discussion has a big caveat, in that I only have one example of each guitar, and with the Yamaha I have a strong feeling that there could be a lot of variation in overall quality. As in possibly poor quality control.
Out of the box:
To answer a question reasonably close to the OPs: straight out of the box, for the beginner who wont be getting a setup for whatever reason, the Oliver is the clear winner, not least because one could actually derive some enjoyment from playing it. But with decent setups, Im thinking it comes down to do you want a dread or something more intimate and/or for fingerstyle.
The Oliver is a quite pretty in appearance. The fit and finish are very good. No obvious imperfections. Despite action being on the high side and needing a bit of work on the nut, it is certainly playable out of the box. Fingerboard is just a little bit rough. Also has a little hump in the fingerboard starting around fret 16 on up. The tone is mellow, a little boxy at first, but has seemed less so after some adjustments. Its my first experience with a mahogany top, so I cant really tell how much of what Im hearing is characteristic of mahogany.
The FG800 is not so pretty. Part of that is the sandburst finish (I thought it might be cool to have something a little different-looking). Turns out that for me, it is not an attractive color for a burst after all. The *thick* shiny finish is nice enough except for a centimeter size bubble in the finish next to the binding on the lower bout (a piece of the bubble is chipped off, exposing raw wood). The nut is sloppy, like this was somebodys first day on the job. Way too high, and the strings, while evenly spaced, are all shifted to the low side. The walnut fretboard felt like 200 grit sandpaper. A barre F was practically impossible, and everything was hard to play. I imagine most people would have returned this Yamaha right away, but the tone was nice, I can fix the the finish to my satisfaction, and the neck and neck-set looked good enough that playability seemed achievable. And I have nut files. So I went for it.
With the Oliver, I set the relief to 0.005 with the provided allen wrench (there was way too much relief as delivered), and that alone was sufficient to get the low E action to just under 5/64. Thats not too shabby. Filing the nut slots to just over fret height it was more like 4.5/64. The hump in the neck scares me away from doing any saddle-sanding.
The Yamaha: relief was already on the razors edge, so I filed the nut slots to just above fret height and sanded 3/64 off the bridge (shading it to the low side, as the high side wasnt as bad off. There is a high fret somewhere that stops me from going lower, although there is still plenty of saddle. Sanded the fretboard with 600 grit sandpaper, then ran 0000 steel wool over it and the frets. And the back of the neck which was pretty rough, too, for a guitar neck. With level frets, I believe it could get really low action.
I now have two more easy-playing, good sounding guitars. They will both live their lives with me in a lowered tuning state, so now I just need to find the right strings and gauges to bring out their best in those tunings. I'm totally happy with both of them - they aren't toys now, they are instruments. And they aren't even Zagarized. I said I would also compare these two with my Martin HD28V and The Taylor 812ce 12-fret, but I decided that ain't fair.
Here are the numbers:
Out-of-the-box specs (Oliver) (FG800)
nut width (1 23/32) (1 11/16)
String spacing-nut (1 15/32) (1 14/32)
String spacing-bridge (2 5/32) (2 5/32)
12th fret high E (5/64) (4.5/64)
12th fret low E (7/64) (7/64)
1st fret high E (0.02) (0.025)
1st fret low E (0.02) (0.04)
relief @fret 7, low E (0.015) (0.002)
After setup
12th fret high E (4/64) (4.5/64)
12th fret low E (4.5/64) (5.5/64)
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09-05-2020, 10:58 AM
