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affect -> Buying a Navarro Student from La Falseta: Review and Recommendation (May 13 2009 20:45:45)
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After some serious search for a decent student flamenco guitar, I ended up buying a Francisco Navarro Student 1 Flamenco guitar from La Falseta (lafalseta.com). I like both the guitar and the shop and here is why...
First, the guitar: a Francisco Navarro Student 1 Blanca with German spruce top. I haven't played many high-end flamenco guitars, but mostly had access to Yamaha's guitars and managed to play both Manuel Rodriguez models (C3F and FF). Navarro's guitar leaves both models and all of Yamaha's guitars in its track! It's light, has nice mid-base notes and plays very nice. Given that it is almost half the price of the FF, this is a great deal. Surely you can get a CG171SF for cheaper, but if you're a serious beginner like myself, you need a decent guitar if you can not afford a concert one. I think that anything less will impede your learning. It is like Anders keeps pointing out in these forum: a good guitar pushes you and improves your playing. I love my new guitar. It's even much more aesthetically pleasing than I thought (pics below). You can hear the cedar version here: http://lafalseta.com/navarro_flamencos.html
Second, the shop: La Falseta. Based on recommendations on this forum, I contacted Tom of La Falseta and had some questions. Tom was very responsive and an articulate communicator which put me at ease and increased my confidence. I ordered the cedar version to save some money (the spruce version is $150 more). But the story does not end here...
There was a mix up and Tom received a classical guitar instead of the flameno one. He promptly and honestly communicated this error and offered to give me the spruce top version for the same price of the cedar (if I did not want to wait for Navarro to make me a cedar one). I told Tom that I'd pay him had I had the money, but he said that he wouldn't have accepted. He then offered me a refund for a difference in the shipping fees when it turned out to be cheaper to ship to Canada for the shipping option he found. I asked him to keep the money to cover any extra expenses he might have incurred in this transaction, but he also refused and offered to send me a cejilla instead.
Anytime I throw money at a business and they refuse, I take note. I really appreciated Tom's work ethics and customer service and will probably be back when I get my concert guitar in the future. I hasten to add that I'm making this recommendation out of my own initiative and that I am getting nothing in return except that I thank La Falseta for a good buying experience and help others find a good student (or concert) guitar.
Here are some nice pictures I took of the guitar using my Canon Rebel XT DSLR.
Images are resized automatically to a maximum width of 800px
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