apak -> RE: Ordering a Francisco Navarro Guitar - is this a good deal? (Jul. 24 2010 19:43:34)
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So my Francisco Navarro Concert flamenco arrived on Thursday. Firstly, it sounds great. I don't have a discerning ear for what makes a fantastic flamenco guitar, but playing this one I can at least very immediately tell the very major difference between an authentic flamenco sound compared to the best I ever could have pulled off with my classical guitar. On a second note, I am NOT overly impressed with this guitar's overall finishing and aesthetics quality. Before I go on, two disclaimers 1) I am comparing it to my Yamaha NCX-2000R Classical guitar, which is hand-made in Japan (before you jump all over me, I am aware of the complications of "handmade" claims made my major brands, however, Yamaha does not advertise their guitars as handmade in general, unless to a great degree, it actually is. 2) the Yamaha NCX-2000R cost me about 3x what I paid for the FN flamenco, and it is just about the top end when it comes to commercial brand classical guitars Back to FN's finish - most the blemishes are not obvious and you find them with closer scrutiny, but they are there: As soon as I took it out of the packaging, I noticed small indentations near few of the frets in the ebony fingerboard. I am guessing these are marks from the edge of the hammer to place in the fret bars, which could have been avoided with greater care of the builder. There are also two small dots in two places on the top wood finish which seem to be foreign particles trapped in the lacquer. Looking through the sound hole, there is some glue residue at the attachments. At the very edge of the bridge, there is small amounts of glue residue (<1mm) on the top wood. The worst blemish is on the top wood at the very edge of the sound hole which is a 2 mm spot that simply did not get covered by polish. Other than that, I don't see any major defects. There is NO warping, NO cracks, and the neck is as nice and straight as it could be. And as I said before, this guitar sounds fantastic. I hope people reading this put the criticism I have of the small blemishes in perspective; For $1000, I got a muy flamenco hand-made guitar and case, with shipping and taxes included. Sorry, I don't a camera around to attach images.
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