avimuno -> RE: Who has tried out a Grit Laskin guitar? (Feb. 7 2011 5:49:13)
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Hi Ruphus, I've played a number of his guitars (both at the 12th Fret and from people I knew who owned them). First of all, his building quality is excellent. Really good workmanship using the best tonewoods. My teacher used to own one. He took it with him in Spain and apparently the late Pedro Perez (from 'Pedro de Miguel') was really impressed with the finish of the instrument. Pedro had a close look at the guitar and inspected every aspect of it before declaring: 'Good guitar, but it does not have the secret ingredient!'. In a nutshell, that's how I feel about Laskin Guitars... Laskin's flamencos are beautiful instruments that sound good. Both his blancas and his negras are good and they are very delicately build with a very thin neck (which I personally do not like, but it's a question of taste... I can see an electric guitar player feeling at home on it). However, they quite simply lack that special something that makes me wanna play my Conde day in day out. It's not the sound... it's the way the guitar reacts and interacts with you... which affects the way it sounds. The Conde fights back and begs to be played. The more you put in the better it sounds... which makes you a better player in the long run because you have to clean up your technique to make it sound right. Another thing I feel very strongly about is the pulsation/tension of the guitar. A flamenco guitar's pulsation is a tricky thing to get right because it has to be soft enought to allow for rasgeados but hard enough to enable alzapuas and picados to cut through clearly. A lot of people complain that concert instruments (and particularly Condes) are super hard on the right hand. In my experience it's a good thing... here again you need to work on your technique. Playing guitar is a workout for your hands and eventually your hands will be able to coop with a guitar like that. Just listen to every good guitarists out there... they have very strong hands and the guitars do not sound mushy, which means that the pulsation is fairly high. I have never played a Laskin for more than 1h30 at a time but I have never found them to have the kind of pulsation I like... it was always too soft, even with hard tension strings, which resulted in the guitar sound mushy and having to real definition when pushed hard. Here again, it's a question of taste so what's true for me is not necessarily true for you. Last, coming back to what Pedro Perez called the 'secret ingredient'... I think that he was referring to a sort of natural 'compression' within the guitar itself. It's really hard to explain otherwise... it's like that guitar has a compressor in it. I've played Condes, Pedro de Miguel, Gerundino and Plazuelo... and they all had this. It's as if the guitar evens out all the frequencies before the sound leaves the box, resulting in the sound blossoming from the guitar rather than just coming out of it (sorry for the metaphors, but you have to hear it to understand what I mean). I can hear and feel it on my Conde but not on my Sanchis for example. I couldn't hear or feel it on any of the 4 Laskins I've played. Here again, i guess that it's a question of taste... Sanchis makes great sounding guitars but in the end the sound of my Conde is more refined. In the end the choice is yours... as I said Laskin makes really good guitars. He's certainly very famous for his steel strings. My feeling is that if you're gonna pay 14 grand for a Laskin, you might as well get something from Conde, Reyes, Barba, Pedro de Miguel, Juan Miguel Gonzales, Marvi etc. Hope that helped. Saludos
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