NGD Emerald X20 Nylon Amber Weave

[mountainmaster]

New Guitar Week actually. It arrived last Wednesday.

Specifications
Radius 20"
Nut width 49 mm
String spacing at nut 41.5 mm
Scale length 650 mm
Pickup K&K Pure Mini
Gold trinity celtic knot inlays







The inlays are somewhat subdued compared to the frets and the strangely reflective fret board, but if the light hits them right they shine almost as brightly.



So why these dimensions? It is all about preventing the high E string to slip off the end of the fret board when doing legatos. I hate it when that happens and with these dimensions that is no longer possible. Goal achieved!
In order to further increase playability I specified a low action: 3 mm at the low E and 2.5 mm at the high E. That may not seem very low to a steel string player but for nylon strings it is. Yet there is no buzz at all.

So the guitar plays great, but how does it sound? Well... as far as the combination carbon fiber and nylon strings goes it sounds quite good. The tone is sweet. I like it better than my X7 Nylon.
Still I notice that same lack of projection my X7 has. Nylon strings just seem to have a hard time keeping a stiff carbon fiber top in motion.
But that is all fine because sweet and soft fits my playing style well.

And the bad? While the set up is nearly perfect I did notice a minor flaw regarding the string spacing at the bridge: The B string is visibly closer to the E string than to the G string. If I try to place it in the middle it just slides back to its old spot. The saddle does have a small cut at the correct position but it needs to be a little deeper to keep the string in place.

[Goodallboy]

Congratulations on a gorgeous instrument.

Mountain;

What a beautiful guitar!

Your statement regarding projection is right on. CF seems made for steel strings, in terms of projection. I think that CF does fine relative to nylon string tone, but not so well with acoustic projection.

My X10 nylon string guitar is very similar to your 20. Projection is not a problem with the the pickup and the acoustic projection is fine for song writing and small venues.

My guess is that you will bond well with the 20. Congratulations.

[RP]

That's a beauty - many congrats and best wishes for good playing...

[TRose]

Beautiful guitar.
Congratulations!

[Explorer]

I don't think it's necessarily CF's lack of projection.

I remember having tried the Composite Acoustics Legacy dread, which sounded like wood. It was an ear opener, countering much conventional wisdom about such being not possible with CF.

Given how many here have been willing to take a chance (or even more than one) on expensive (for me at least) custom nylon builds, I'm still astounded that no one here ever attempted to take a chance on one of the Dlutowski classical or flamenco CF guitars which had a great reputation among players of such. I think they've now been discontinued though....

[esimms86]

Congrats on what is arguably the most beautiful guitar in that week's shipping video. A real golden beauty. I would suggest you contact Alistair about the string alignment. Hopefully, a local luthier could fix it for you. In any event, I'm certain that Alistair will stand behind his work and make things right for you.

[Captain Jim]

Wow - that is pretty! Congrats!

[ceciltguitar]

That is a BEAUTIFUL guitar!! CONGRATULATIONS!!

[GuitarDoc]

Delivery brother to mine. Yours the beauty of the bunch.

[mountainmaster]

Thanks everyone!

Look, I found a matching strap.



@Explorer: I would love to try a Dlutowski classical but my nylon string needs are covered for now. And if you missed it, I won this guitar in the "Design your Emerald" competition so costs were not an issue in my case.

@esimms86: I regularly adjust the saddles of my guitars so I should be able to fix the alignment myself. In my experience all guitars have setup flaws. I never owned one that was perfect straight out of the box, expensive and cheap alike.

[kramster]

Wow that looks great!!

Great guitar, Great strap!!

[esimms86]

All I can say is, WOW! mountainmaster, from Alistair this one's for you!:

https://www.facebook.com/EmeraldGuit...13602823378998

[mountainmaster]

I am currently trying out a Zero Glide nut in this guitar.



My X20 has custom specs and since I did not want to file the slots myself, I had the nut custom made at Gold Tone. The nut is a perfect fit and it drops right in.
Of the 3 stainless steel frets that came with it I had to use the middle sized one. That fret is a little too wide though and it pushes the nut backwards. If I want a tighter fit for the fret I will still have to make adjustments to the nut. At this point everything is held in place by the pressure of the strings and nothing has been glued yet.

As you can see Gold Tone offers a black nut option but, in spite of their name, they cannot provide Evo Gold frets. So there goes my gold theme.

The action is now lower at the nut than it was. I prefer the ease of playing which feels closer to a steel string. And as long as there is no fret buzz there is no harm in it.

Does it sound better now?
As expected open strings now sound the same as fretted notes. Which in this case is... less bright. Something I should have expected (being familiar with the sound of my fretted notes) but which still came as a surprise. Does graphtec material produce more brightness than stainless steel? Or is this only a thing in combination with nylon strings?

Anyway, a warmer tone is not a bad thing for this rather bright guitar so that is +1.
I also seem to have more punch now without losing any sustain: +2.
What I was also hoping for is... there is that word again... better projection, but I don't think there is any improvement there. Two out of three. Not bad.