sookwinder wrote: ↑Mon Apr 01, 2019 10:07 pm
Maybe to reproduce the (shitty) technical aspects of the crappy thick moulded pickguard first used on the J45 in the early 60s... just measure the thickness of the guard on my 64 J50 ... 2mm
Getting back to this J15. Given your experience if Gibby acoustics and your praise for the sound, not withstanding the fix ups required (a good set up, replace the plastic saddle and pins) , it sounds like it is a great value for money acoustic and being walnut will certainly give a different sound than what we are all used to in this shaped acoustic. What type of / style of playing do you think it is best suited for?
Yeah, I like the Gibson acoustic sound quite a bit. There is definitely a theme with their guitars, I even have a J-60, which is basically Gibson's attempt to directly make an HD-28 and even that has a bit of the Gibson sound in there regardless.
For the value, no question, this is a great instrument. I guess that Gibson wanted to make an entry level guitar and appeal to a price point that their guitars usually don't live at, and they succeeded very well... maybe even too well. Honestly, if I had this J-15 for some years then I might have thought twice about the J-45 and such, they cover a great deal of the same ground as anyone would guess.
I don't doubt that the differences will reveal themselves over time and that I'll come to prefer one for certain things, then again, it's possible that I find one redundant in time and then I'll use the J-15 or the J-35 as a pawn for something else. I kind of doubt that, because I like this J shape guitar quite a bit, and find it very comfortable to play and I like having them around, but you never know. I might get tired of the whole Gibson-mania thing some day.
But, I can already see that the J-15 will be a good recording guitar, it's very clear sounding and will probably shine in front of a microphone. It's got a lot of volatility to it from what I can tell, though, a good amount of dynamic range and it's easy to make it pop out with sound, so you'd need some control with your picking hand to not overwhelm the microphone.
There's a thing that I do where I imagine myself as a microphone listening to the sound decaying into the soundhole, and that's where a lot of acoustics can fail. It's relatively easy enough to make the attack of an acoustic sound pretty good, the fundamental notes can usually be strong and pleasant with any guitar. But the other parts of the sound envelope, the decay, sustain and release are where guitars can start to fail, once the initial notes fade away you can be left with these harsh overtones.
This guitar seems to stay very sweet and clear as the notes decay- it's got that "sweet" sound that Gibsons can often have. I would say I'm pretty sold on walnut as a tone wood already.
Now, this would tell me that it will be a good fingerstyle guitar but right now it's kind of not set up, it came out needing a truss rod adjustment which I haven't done yet. I guess I'll let it settle in for a bit and then get around to it, right now the action is a little high, the strings seem kind of old and there is some buzzing on the frets so it's hard to say if it'll be some thing that I really like finger picking on or not.
I do like this body shape for fingerpicking and love doing that on the J-45, so this at least has the potential to be as good as that. Then again, I like fingerstyle picking considerably less on my J-35, so maybe it'll only be as good as that- just OK.
I pulled the plastic saddle out and put in a spare bone saddle, it doesn't quite fit as good as I'd hoped so I'll have to order one soon. I also slid the undersaddle pickup out from under the saddle and once I know this is a keeper I'll probably pull the electronics out entirely. I think I'm going to pull the electronics out of all my acoustics and maybe put a K&K Mini in one of them- these LR Baggs things sound horrible to me.
Back in those days, everyone knew that if you were talking about Destiny's Child, you were talking about Beyonce, LaTavia, LeToya, and Larry.