#16
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Best part is bypassing the "24 hour wait for the guitar to acclimate before opening your fine wood instrument" part.
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Don't chase tone. Make tone. |
#17
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My first Emerald came the fastest: ordered (in stock) late Thursday, shipped on Friday afternoon from Ireland, received in south Texas just after lunch on Monday. Just under 3 days enroute. (4 days from placing the order)
The second one took 13 days (I bought a Select Series on a Friday and it missed that week's shipping, so it didn't go out for a week); for the record, that one was shipped to AZ. The third one (a custom scale X10 w/Level 2) seemed to take forever from the "should ship" date to the actual ship date... then it was received at our local Post Office just before noon on the Saturday of a holiday weekend... so it sat there until the following Tuesday. I don't know if there is some correlation between time of delivery and age... maybe this is why Evan's latest custom has been years in the making? It seems that as I... um... mature, I have less patience about waiting. For anything. Same premise as life and toilet paper: the closer you get to the end, the faster it goes.
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Some CF, some wood. |
#18
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Captain;
Amen. |
#19
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Initial impression...
Ok so I got home last night after work, took care of my dog and some chores, and finally got to sit down with it for a few hours. It really is an exceptional instrument. I took it out of the case and did a 5 minute visual inspection or so, looking at the bevels, frets, etc. Everything looks great, and they set it up nicely per my specs. It really is a beautiful work of art. The ergonomics... The design of this guitar has been talked about plenty on here. As many have stated, it is truly the most comfortable acoustic I have ever played. I played it back to back with my Guild concert sized M-140E & my Seagull dread and the Emerald just molds to your body. Even my small Guild will leave red lines on my forearm and ribs after a couple hours of playing. The neck feels great and very close in size to my Guild's neck, which maybe seems just a bit thicker, but this is anecdotal and not measured. Now, on to the tone... I mainly play finger style without a thumb pick, so it wasn't as loud as I was expecting based on all the reviews I read online *until I used a pick* and then it was very loud, and sounded great even with a heavier attack- with clarity and nice string separation and no muddy sound. It sounds awesome as a strummer, and the guitar body really vibrates against your body when played semi-aggressively which just feels really good. So then I put the pick down and started to mess with various chords up the neck. I didn't find any dead spots, everything sounded and played great. I put my capo on and tried that in a few positions to see if there were any issues of it fretting out, and there were none. So far so good. The tone with using only my fingers is really inspiring to me, even though you lose some volume doing that. I don't mind however, as it is still a loud guitar, and I can always plug in if needed. There is just a really great clear tone from this guitar, with sympathetic resonance from the other strings almost giving a reverb-like effect. With a lighter touch, it sounds and feels compressed as notes kind of pop as my nails hit the strings at the end of the strokes. It sounds wonderful and harmonics on the 5, 7, and 12 ring loud and clear with lots of sustain. Being a CF guitar, I was surprised at how dark it sounds. It shipped with 12 gauge 80/20 strings so I was expecting a brighter tone, and figured I would try out different strings to mellow it out (I went with monel/nickel with my Gibson J-185 as it was a brighter sounding guitar). This was not the case at all, and the trebles are really sweet sounding and my other guitars sound thinner and more harsh to my ear when compared back and forth on the higher strings. Someone had talked about the bass being a bit boomy, but I don't see much difference from my Gibson jumbo that I just sold. A large guitar like this needs a little less attack on the low strings and it shouldn't be a big deal to most players to make this minor adjustment. About Emerald... Emerald was great to work with. They answered questions quickly and Chloe and Simon seemed genuinely interested in making me happy throughout the process. You can always tell when employee's love their job, and it shows with this company. Misc ramblings... I realize I am in the honeymoon phase, but I will try to update this thread later this year after I have put several hundred hours on it. Any of you are welcome to PM me if you have any questions or want to talk about the X30 model. See below for the link with photos, I am too lazy to take any myself. Thanks for reading! https://emeraldguitars.com/product/x...-series-12-19/ |
#20
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Hi Frank, So glad you love it! Hope you have many years of enjoyment and creativity with it. And yes, I do love my job
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#21
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I second what Simon said! It's the best job.
All the best with it and many happy years Frank! |
#22
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Your review has me thinking the x30 would make a wonderful 12 string....hummmm
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