Jon Boyes -> Back from the big smoke, more guitars tried.. (Jun. 28 2004 13:05:18)
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Just got back from a trip to London where I popped into El Mundos and Andy's Guitar centre to try out flamenco guitars. Having tried out another pile of flamenco guitars, guess what? I'm not selling my Sanchis. Yep, I took the Sanchis up with me so I could get an accurate comparison of tone and set up etc, without relying on my memory and to rule out room acoustics being a factor. My Sanchis actually sounded better than some guitars twice the price (no doubt partly due to the strings, see below) but it also played a lot smoother than many of the others I tried. I am slowly getting use to the naranja too, despite preferring a blonde finish. I tried out guitars from about £400 - £3k, and my conclusions, (which will no doubt sound very familiar) were: -it was suprising the state of the strings on some of these guitars - how can you honestly appraise a one thousand pound guitar that has a set of rusty old cheese wires on it? -so much for quality control eh? I tried two Burguet 2Fs back to back, one had the action of a bow and arrow and sounded clunky, the other was fine (interestingly though, there WAS a difference in price of £100). -I didn't play one guitar that didn't (badly in some cases) need a set up. The saddle height on some of these was suprisingly high. -What really suprised me most of all was how little the general difference was between the guitars across the intermediate - expensive price range, a point I think Ron made recently. Did the £3k guitar sound better than my Sanchis? Well yes, a little more refined in tone, a little 'tighter' and more even across the strings, but not two and a half grand's worth of better tone! Andys at Denmark street only had a Bernal Sueno left in stock at £1.4k. Nice guitar, but no real difference to what I already have. Anyhow, El Mundo's was great fun, wall to wall flamenco guitars and paraphenalia, lots of flamenco vids and CDs, and music books. I was like a kid in a sweet shop. And I finally understand what Simon's 'guitar mute' is [;)]... The guy in the shop told me that the owner (Juan somebody?) is getting Moraito over to London to do a workshop. I told him to subscribe to Foro Flamenco and keep us updated, so we may hear from them soon. So there you go. After deciding to keep the Sanchis, it is currently in the hands of my local guitar tech who is tweaking the saddle and nut a little for me. ..there's a moral there, somewhere. Jon
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