Post by thedorkknight on Aug 22, 2017 22:44:05 GMT
After a long wait I've got my first good acoustic guitar. A 000 size Recording King. I've never played a 000 before and I must say my short arms get along with it well. It is a total rip-off of a vintage Martin, which is made obvious from the gorgeous torch headstock. It's got a solid spruce top, a solid mahogany back and sides, which are lighter in colour than i expected (a good thing) and a v-shaped mahogany neck, which I believe is all one piece. It has a rosewood fretboard. It has very pretty vintage style open back Grover tuners. Classic herringbone rosette. It really is a gorgeous looking instrument. The action came a little high, but still well set up, very playable. It wasn't anywhere near in tune, but I suspect this has been sitting around for years in a warehouse, the model has been discontinued a while.
The v-shape neck is unfamiliar to me and I was a little worried about it, but so far it's been fine.
The main thing about this guitar for me is the 000 body. Size wise it is perfect for me, thinner than the very cheap grand auditorium size guitar I had before and marginally smaller. However the shape really isn't my preference visually, not that it isn't a beautiful guitar, I just love a modern dreadnought. The other thing about the size is it really affects the volume, it's very quiet, not a negative or a positive, just an observation. The tone itself is gorgeous, particularly for picking. I may have to learn a bit more finger picking just for this, I'm more of a strummer or at least use a pick.
So why this guitar, if it's not exactly to my taste style wise? Well that was the price. Recording Kings are good value Chinese made (sounds familiar) vintage style guitars and I'm not surprised this retailed at about €500, (still very affordable for an all solid guitar) But this particular one was being sold at an incredible discount, so I took a punt. I got it from Bax Music, but they don't deliver to Ireland so it was a bit more effort to get it here (hence the wait). They still have a couple of discounted Recording Kings (a b-stock slope shoulder looks good), but this model is all gone now.
I'll try to get some pictures up.
