Electro Acoustics

Every once in a while, something a little out of the ordinary comes along and sweeps you up in its charm. Keep your eyes peeled for this limited-availability guitar…

In a limited run of just 40 instruments which have been made available for the European market, this is obviously a scarce creature and one worth seeking out (the label inside of this guitar denotes that it is number 16 of 80, probably of worldwide distribution). Takamine have produced two most recent and limited guitars, both the Yozakura and the Kunoichi. This, the former, has been created to symbolise the special occasion of witnessing Japanese cherry and plum blossom falling, contrasting with the night sky, and both use kimono silks and mother-of-pearl to detail their inlays.

Build Quality

The Yozakura has an attractive and inspirational appeal in its looks, conjuring imagery of all sorts of Far Eastern gardens of nocturnal intrigue and splendour. The Takamine brand has long been held in high regard, especially when under the banner of their limited-edition models. Yes, this guitar is made in Japan and there are some really high-calibre features which identify just how well this guitar has been constructed. Apart from the obvious beauty of the kimono silk inlaid flowers, high-gloss finish and artistically balanced soundhole crescent rosette, as per usual with high-calibre guitars, there is more here than initially meets the eye. The split saddle offers more accurate intonation of all your strings and produces better continuity from your harmonics and fretted notes where there may otherwise be giveaway and telltale dissonance. The solid cedar top produces a thoroughly impressive resonance and vibration due to the added attention that has been applied to its thicknessing. The beauty of a non-mass-produced guitar often lies in the time that has been invested in getting the most from the bespoke component elements that make up the whole. This means that the backs and sides will have been given extra attention also, along with the scalloped X bracing. The back also employs solid sapele, an African near equivalent to South American mahogany in terms of strength, response to humidity and tone. As the sides arguably impart less tonally perceivable qualities than the top and back, these remain as sapele laminates. (Takamine have produced incredible electro-acoustic tones with their laminate-top instruments over the years and really know how, when and where to use their laminates for strength and signal transfer.) The gold and bold headstock logo proudly matches the machine heads in superb fashion, along with both the neck strap button and three-screw and pin jack socket. Fretting is immaculate and the black glossy neck profile has a substantial C cross section with a subtle taper further up the neck which has a cool-to-the-touch feel.

Sound Quality

This guitar really does have a personality all of its own and could easily become something of a companion instrument rather than a workhorse guitar. (Not to say that this isn’t suitable for gigging, because it would excel, but there is a uniqueness about it that may make you may feel protective towards it.) Open chords ring out with an alert and shimmering presence and have a vibrant freshness about them, and encouragingly this quality remains in good shape as you play chords further up the fingerboard, without becoming thinned out and more brittle. Their harmonic strength and incredible sustain within this guitar are identifying traits that serve to enhance and add to Takamine’s reputation. You can’t help but want to incorporate them within your playing because they leap out from all the usual places as readily as jumping in puddles causes a splash. It is a joyful instrument and it never becomes aggressive or harsh in its glassine definition. It has integrity in producing more of the same detail and complexity as you dig in and it becomes more brilliant the harder you play.

Other characteristics which really stand out are the impressive resonance and continuing sonorous nature of the whole body when strummed. You can feel that the thicknessing of the guitar has been given a lot of attention as there is a holistic feel of musicality and energy from this guitar – and particularly so from the top end, which creates a full and busy presence. This guitar was supplied with phosphor bronze strings and enhances this.

The CT4-DX Cool Tube preamp is a high-calibre feedback-buster utilising two notch controls, as well as being a tone-shaping unit. There is both a high- and low-mid shaping slider for varying the biggest frequency range open to the ear, and overall the guitar continues to produce an open, airy and bright character unless you chop out the entire top end and radically boost the mids. The clever part is that you can choose to purchase an additional Takamine Triax soundhole pickup, plug this into the preamp jack socket and then blend between the two pickups, using the top right mix pot with two-band EQ and independent notch filtering.

Conclusion

At the £1,918 price point this guitar offers not just a superb studio-quality sound but an expandability which serves to fill out an even more dynamic and full breadth of tone. This is a highly exclusive and flexible instrument and an item to cherish if you are fortunate to source one. It excels as a fingerpicker and is thoroughly musical, sonorous and resonant. It has a great life of its own and brilliant tonal personality.

Russell Welton

Martin’s DRS1 represents an instrument with an ecological clean bill of health. Renowned tree-hugger David Mead has the facts …

Martin’s DRS1 marks the latest in the line of their Road Series guitars. That is, models produced for the working environment which Martin tell us don’t sacrifice tone but boast sturdy construction, great sound and quality electronics with that distinctive allure of a top brand. This model has another trick up its sleeve in that it represents an ecological statement of purpose from the world’s most popular acoustic manufacturer. No contentious timber was used in its construction at all; furthermore, Martin have made use of recycled materials to provide a new resource for the fretboard and bridge …

Build Quality

Upon opening the DRS1’s case, I thought I was looking at an all-mahogany dreadnought from Martin, but closer inspection revealed that the body wood used for both back and sides in this instance is sapele. This is a wood that is native to Africa and comes from managed sources and thus satisfies the CITES criteria nicely. In fact, it wasn’t long before I saw a trend developing with this instrument in that it’s definitely one that will give the world’s wood police no cause for concern whatsoever!

Flipping the dashingly dark dread over reveals another surprise, in that the neck has avoided the use of mahogany too and substituted Stratabond. There’s a chance that this is as new a name to you as it was to me, but it turns out that this is a method where strips of birch are bonded together and then fashioned into necks. Martin tell me that this makes the neck incredibly strong and straight and I’ve no reason to doubt them.

The fingerboard and bridge material might throw up a new word to Google too, as it’s made from Richlite, a substance that defines itself as being paper-based fibre composites that can be found elsewhere in anything from skateboards to kitchen work surfaces. Here it’s been dyed black to look like ebony, but I suspect that Richlite is both a fraction of that wood’s cost and, of course, another blow struck for saving the planet from us wretched speciality-tonewood-obsessed guitarists!

Time will tell as to whether Richlite is as durable as ebony or rosewood, but my suspicions are that if you can make something like a skateboard from it, then it has to be able to stand up to some pretty hair-raising levels of stress. It might be that sitting there quietly as a fretboard would seem a fairly peaceful life by comparison.

Frets are all seated well and finished nicely and those very subtle pearloid dots suit the general conservative overtones of this Martin very nicely indeed. Other than that, the DRS1 clocks in as pretty much standard dreadnought fare, and as you would expect from Martin everything is splendidly neat and tidy from top to bottom, inside and out.

Stage-ready electronics are handled by the redoubtable Fishman Sonicore system, which is so discreet you would hardly notice they were there. The battery and preamp are neatly tucked away just inside the soundhole, meaning that no unsightly lumps and bumps compromise the guitar’s good looks and clean lines. The guitar is completely satin finished, which feels nice in the hand, although I suspect that some diehards will yearn for a bit of gloss.

Sound Quality

Hats off to Martin for making such a bold ecological statement; but do traditional bracing methods and materials walk hand in hand with all this green thinking? What I found with the first few chordal strums was a tone that might be said to be darker than a spruce-topped dread, but possibly not quite as dark as actual mahogany. There wasn’t too much evidence of the massive ‘piano bass’ that Martin are famous for either. But hang on – this guitar is from the Road Series, and so surely its real area of expertise is to be found in the live-performance arena. And that means plugging it in …

As it turns out, the DRS1 positively leaps into action when plugged in, with chords ringing sweetly and some admirable levels of sustain. One definite thing in its favour was that I didn’t have to sit and fiddle with the EQ on the Sonicore for ages before I found a tone that I liked. Neither did I have to tweak the tone controls on my amp – everything was flat and good tone was instantaneous.

Conclusion

You’d have no trouble getting the DRS1 through customs in the USA, that’s for sure – not something that can be said for many acoustics made from naughtier woods in much simpler times. I couldn’t really find that profound depth that Martin dreads usually have in spades, but let’s face it, you’re not buying a D-28 here – you’re getting a well-built dread with bags of amplified good sounds, plus a hard case, for well under a grand.

David Mead

A carbon composite guitar – with no heel join? Surely it must appeal to only very acquired tastes? Or is it, in fact, more accessible?

The GX model is the most popular in the range of new composite acoustics produced by the self-titled company now distributed here in the UK by Peavey. There are several variations on the theme offered, and the radical design concepts and highly engineered form factor make for a huge departure from traditional methods; but what we want to know is, is it any good? What does it feel and sound like, and does this black bombshell have any other secret weapons up its sleeve? One is the claim that it has a lower carbon footprint in its production than a wooden guitar...

Build Quality

This guitar is indisputably well made and very well represented, and the ‘HG’ denotes a high-gloss finish. The wow factor which leaps out at me is the highly innovative heelless neck join, and how comfortable this feels, despite looking so unconventional. It really is very cool indeed. Even though there is no material here where you would expect a conventional wooden instrument to have its heel block, you don’t find yourself compromised in either poise with the guitar or in playing up and down the reinforced polymer fretboard. Quite the opposite is true – it’s particularly brilliant for access to the high frets and perhaps the ultimate design solution to achieve this goal. It could perhaps benefit a little further if the action were lowered a fractional amount. The C-profiled neck itself flows into the body at the 14th fret and is available in two widths: both 1.75” at the nut and 1.69” as a narrow-neck-feel option. This one on review is the first version and runs at a 25.5” scale length and 14” radius and is superbly playable, even if the bridge pins do sit a little proud.

All the proportions of the GX body shape, headstock and carbon-fibre bridge look completely balanced and well thought out, and this includes the very tasteful abalone inlaid soundhole detail and headstock and body binding effect. This effect has been cleverly produced by leaving the edges uncovered and contrasted with a black headstock plate (which has been sprayed on), thus revealing its attractively woven pattern. The same technique has been used to create the body binding and burst effect on the sound table. The whole neck and body have been made from one rigid piece of composite, and as such, no truss rod is required thanks to this rigidity. Goodbye neck relief problems once and for all.

The internal bracing is similarly made from lightweight carbon fibre, also contributing to incredible strength and light construction for maximum volume and structural integrity, and it works well for the volume from this bespoke acoustically tailored composite material.

Sound Quality

It has to be said that the sound of the guitar is typical of carbon fibre. Although it sounds like an obvious thing to say, carbon composites often have a tone of their own which acoustically is quite mellow, smooth and a little lacking in vibrancy and top-end detail. For this reason this guitar has been equipped sensibly with phosphor bronze strings and an LR Baggs iMix pickup system to enhance the treble definition, and this does work a little as far as the strings go, but much more so when plugged in.

Acoustically, the bass response is quite full and has a good tightness to it, and overall there is a real overriding quality of very compressed and subdued dynamics. This in its own right could be very well suited to some studio recording situations if you were to get your primary tones from mic’ing up the GX. If, however, you are looking for the complexity of mahogany or plum richness of Brazilian rosewood, then this is not the guitar for you. Having said that, because of the compressed tonal nature of this guitar it lends itself to hard and aggressively punctuated rhythm attack very well, and perhaps this matches its more heavy metal looks and rock nature with suitable synergy. This aspect of playing the guitar is immense fun and encourages more bounce in your attack, palm-muting and reverb-deadening playing, but it’s also great fun to play because of the excellent neck profile. There are harmonics to be enjoyed too, but more from playing them directly rather than saturated within chord work. Amplified, you enter the other side of the guitar’s personality and awaken the treble with the I-Beam. When blended in, this transforms the somewhat flattish piezo sound with prescribed top-end clarity, and as you boost the bass and treble sliders more, so you will likely need to use the phase switch to kill feedback, and this works with Eurofighter-like precision. The Baggs works well to embellish the carbon characteristics and does as much as is probably possible to round out its sonic spectrum. If you are an avid fingerpicker you may find you only really play this plugged in, and yet there is a compelling momentum to the carbon tone quality which makes you tighten up your clawing and technique in a disciplined way.

Conclusion

This is a very consistent and tolerant guitar which plays well and is incredibly low maintenance. It may not make you think on first play that it’s the holy grail of all tone, but it is stable, reliable and dependably will be so in many years from now. You won’t have to worry about leaving it in your car boot in summer or out in the conservatory in winter (do watch out for condensation, though), and you can even take it on holiday – on safari or to the Namib or out on your yacht – and know that what you see is what you get: something that will not readily be subject to variations in climate and humidity. It is superb fun to play, with perfect upper-fret access, and it looks a million dollars. Out in the field this guitar will take some serious beating. Try it.

Russell Welton