Amazon Carbon Fiber Guitar For Under $300

so in today's episode we're going to answer the question is this new Nova go carbon fiber travel acoustic real or a toy today's episode is sponsored by this new snark air tuner I want to thank them for making this video possible this is one of those guitars that has a lot of promises made about it it's available on Amazon the price on this guitar is 189 dollars for a carbon fiber travel guitar with a deluxe gig bag it comes in a ton of colors and for a hundred dollars more you can get Electronics in it and that may sound a little expensive for just a pickup but there's a lot more to it and this is the model that's more expensive but I checked they are exactly the same except for this technology that's in them which we'll go through in the audio samples one thing you may not know if you're new to this channel when we do these deep dive videos I spend at least a month sometimes three months with an instrument this I've had for almost three months they claim you can use it as a a paddle for a canoe because they could just take any kind of abuse and it's waterproof however this is the one with the electronics in it so because it has the one with electronics in it uh I can't stick it in water so here's what we have let's go over the specifications they don't tell you what type of Frets they are um they look like nickel to me the tuning keys are very basic and they are working fine however I don't have any intention to change them but if you were to upgrade it would make a difference on how fine the tuning would be how quick you could get it to tune up we have a carbon fiber nut that's actually part of the neck and then you have a zero fret here's where it gets a little interesting the guitar came with some pretty cruddy strings and they weren't staying in tune so I had to replace them I put some daddario's on there but also the action was a little high and so I had to sand the bridge a little bit I've had to make no adjustments to the neck what's interesting really interesting is the truss rod cover is rubber and it kind of sticks in there and seals it so that water can't get in your truss rod so they're not kidding when they say it's waterproof again I can't test that part to see if it actually seals from the water because again I can't get water near the electronics but it looks pretty good I don't know if I would submerge this underwater but I would tell you right now if it was if water was being splashed on you uh you know from some kind of activity outside I would not be concerned about this however the Frets if they aren't stainless steel you know there might be some corrosion there you might have to polish out I want to give you a reference to size you can see it here next to a Les Paul you can see it's just basically a little smaller than a Les Paul okay on the back you have a rounded molded back here right here and of course a contour for the cut normally we don't do the handshake test on an acoustic guitar but this one passes immensely obviously it's a little thick right there but that's fantastic and the handshake test is where we hold the guitar where the neck meets the body see how comfortable it is to get around in that area and it's way more comfortable than it should be for a guitar like this after getting over those initial Impressions I got to talk about now this is the electric version like I said it's 100 more so what does that mean well you get an output Jack so you can plug it into an amplifier or a PA system but also you get a USBC charging port and that's to charge the system the entire electronic system is this is one silver knob you push down on it and it glows green to let you know it's on and it's just a basic volume knob that's it there's no EQ controls however what there is with one more tap is whoops one more time tab blue that's built-in Reverb now if you're familiar with this channel you've seen this technology before when I reviewed the high Vibe system now this is not the high Vibe system but it is some kind of copy of that and what they're doing is they're using an actuator or dual actuators and they're connecting them to the electronics and what that does is they connect them to the body of the guitar and they turn the body of the guitar into a speaker so later when we do the sound demonstration when you hear the sounds I will not be plugging direct into the computer or into the interfaces what you will be hearing is what the room can hear so yes this guitar is an actual speaker and you'll hear the effects coming through the air like the wood from an actual speaker let's see what you get when you get this guitar first you're going to get a gig bag but what's nice is it's like hard rubber see it flexes but it is like a hard rubber I mean it's not Crush proof but it's definitely a pretty durable bag another interesting idea is the strap that comes with it right here is it comes with two of these strap ends you put these on the guitar and then there you can use this as your guitar strap for your guitar so it's included there is no real padding it's kind of hard but you have a deep pocket right here and it's pretty good you could put a lot of stuff in here what will come in it is that USB cable for charging if you hit the electric one an allen wrench and a very nicely packaged polish cloth okay so let's get into geeky stuff the first thing is looking over the entire guitar it doesn't say where it's manufactured however from the packaging on the boxes I got it says it's manufactured in China now they claim this is a two-piece body and I want to verify that and there's a couple ways we can do that what they said is that the top is one whole piece and the bottom is a piece and then they're just kind of glued together they're saying this is important because one of the advantages to this is that your bridge is actually molded into the top of your guitar and that might improve the tone and the sustain so let's check if you look here on the headstock you can see where there's definitely two pieces to allude to what they're saying and we can actually go through the sound hole on the side and look inside so let's take a look looking inside I see two things first you can absolutely see where the bridge is part of the molded top so it is one piece like they said and you can also see where the bracing is also in the mold which is interesting it's not just smooth in there and that's probably to improve the sound and right here you can actually see the actuators which are the things that are turning the guitar body into a speaker now looking here you can see what I was talking about earlier here about the graphite nut being molded into the neck you can see the zero fret and of course the tuning keys and you can also now see up close that truss rod cover that's made of rubber it's like a rubber plug now speaking of the zero fret I can confirm right now that they are not spinning steel you can see cuts into the Fret from the strings already and stainless steel fret would not have cuts from strings and that's one of the downfalls of the zero fret especially with nickel Frets it's weird when they make choices to make materials that last forever and then pair them with materials that can wear quickly and that's when downfall this guitar already okay let's see if these Frets are Level okay and the first fret I come across a little bit high so other than that first fret all the Frets seem level and fine so we're going to go ahead and fix that fret using a convenient way plus a hack that's cost effective But please understand just don't level and Crown all your Frets just because of one issue and also verify that the Fret is just not lifted up it might only just need to be tapped down to fix this High fret all we're going to do is loosen the strings just enough to where they go on the sides of the fretboard then just use some painters tape to tape down the strings at the base of the neck so they're cleanly on the sides of the neck and then do it again on the headstock again just keeping all your strings out of the way the fretboard they'll look like this but keep in mind if you buy a string spreader you can do this in seconds although there's an expense to having that tool now you move the strings out of the way you just use a Sharpie to Mark the high fret this is important because if you've done it right all the Sharpie will be removed when you're done filing the Fret so what we're going to use is the stew Mac fret kisser this is essentially a fret Rocker with built-in sandpaper it's really really handy but it's very expensive so it does take a while for it to pay for itself so what you do is put it here like you're going to fret Rock okay and then move it side to side and then you can see now no fret rocking perfect so now let's go ahead and clean that up what we're going to do now is I'm going to use the Z file but you can use any rounding file go ahead and cover it right here like so and just go ahead to polish the Fret back up you have a couple options you can use the Fret erasers or you can use the micro mesh pads that I absolutely love or you can just use steel wool I'm going to use the micro mesh pads because they're my favorite and they get the best results every time I start with 1500 and I'm going to end at 12 000. this usually takes about five to maybe 10 minutes tops now that you've successfully removed all the Sharpie you're done I told you I'd show you another way to do this the basic way is to take a piece of 400 grit paper with double stick or put double stick tape on it cut yourself off a little strip like so and then wrap it around your fret rocker now this is important you want to painters tape the Frets you are not going to be sanding because the front rocker is abrasive compared to the Fret kisser that I used earlier the reason why you want adhesive on the Sandpaper is because you want it to be perfectly flat you don't want it rounded and you basically do it the same way I just used a fret kisser this is not ideal but it works perfectly and you'll be able to achieve the same results [Music] so now let's go ahead and do a friction test and see how well the Frets were polished foreign the Frets feel pretty good but they are definitely not highly polished so I would definitely polish them and if you don't know how to do that I have a video down below in the description that'll help you out now something to take notice too is that they're doing hemispherical Frets which means they're rounding them over on the edges I want to show you how they do this because it is very work intensive what they do is they basically round off the edges of the Fret before it even goes on the fretboard and because of this these always pass the sock test with flying colors let's see how these do and it's a perfect five out of five on the treble side and let's check the base side and I can already tell it's another perfect five out of five again because the Frets are just rounded over so nicely however this is not a rolled fingerboard in other words the edge of the fingerboard is kind of sharp and it's not a hindrance it doesn't bother you when playing but it's not a rolled fingerboard Edge now checking the radius of the fretboard I'm coming in at 16 inch radius on the fretboard and looking at the back of the neck we're seeing it definitely a u-shape to the back of the neck and definitely the same u-shape when you get around the 12th fret so again a kind of more modern electric guitar style neck feel so the nut we have 42.23 millimeters or 1.662 the 12th fret we have 2.071 or 52.61 millimeters thickness at the first fret is 22.19 millimeters or 0.873 the thickness at the 12th fret is 0.941 or 23.92 millimeters so again pretty thin and I'm showing a 23 inch scale length on the guitar with a total length on the guitar at just over 35 or basically 35 and a half inches long and the guitar is coming weighing in at just over four pounds so four pounds also something worth pointing out is that this is a USBC and it can plug your computer in your computer will immediately see this guitar so you can record with the guitar and use the built-in effects or you can plug it into an amp or any other quarter inch plug-in and run it just like audio out so you have two choices um and while you're plugged in your computer recording it's also charging the unit inside now one thing I need to mention is I've had this guitar for about three months and I have tortured it I left it in my truck a couple times and it was actually in tune when I grabbed it I left it in the cold I have abused it in every way and this guitar stays very stable I feel very confident that this guitar could take a lot of abuse when it comes to temperatures and different environments now one major downfall fall of this guitar is it's top heavy in fact it has pretty bad neck dive and that's why you can see I already installed my strap that I use because I kept feeling like I was supporting the weight of the headstock by holding the neck it's not really bad but it's still an issue and if that's something that really irritates you this is something that I would tell you to seriously consider I got past it pretty quickly but it is an issue and this is a good time to mention our sponsor snark with the new snark air that is rechargeable and it's easy Touch system what's great about this is it doesn't have the arm like it used to have and you can put it on the back of the headstock and just double tap the button on the top you can tune your guitar discreetly without anyone knowing that it's happening and again the biggest appeal of this is is it doesn't require any of those expensive 2032 batteries you just plug the included USB cable into a laptop or in your phone chargers and charge it up and you're good to go now let's go ahead and do some sound samples and here's what's going to get interesting real fast I'm going to play the guitar the way you would get it if you got the non-electric version and then I'm going to kick in the elect version I don't mean through the actual transducer pickup I'm going to show you how it sounds with the built-in effects [Music] foreign [Music] the volume on the Reverb up [Music] thank you what I absolutely love about this Reverb is not as it sounds great especially as it's coming at you through this sound Port but I love being able to mute and play an acoustic like this [Music] foreign [Music] so on the next effects I'm not a big fan next you're going to have a delay and it's all right I'm not really enthused with it because again the body's kind of small and the material is so dense it really is not a huge speaker so the Reverb kind of Acts in in in the same time with the sound of the guitar where this you kind of have to wait till the their guitar is not making sounds so let me show you what I mean by that oh [Music] but this is what I mean if you just start playing [Music] foreign [Music] y phaser thing [Music] and so you can tell I think for me the Reverb is this is the star of the show [Music] okay so what are my final thoughts on this guitar well first I have to say it's one of the best mini travel style Acoustics I've ever played I'm not a huge fan of a lot of the mini Acoustics I've played over the years I've owned a bunch I reviewed a bunch and even the baby Taylor which is probably one of my favorite small little Acoustics this sounded better not only because it had the effects but it just sounded better like I said before that Port really kind of adds some low end and when you're playing it it sounds a little better to you plus it's super comfortable to play that's one of the biggest takeaways I can tell you is that I kept picking it up because it was so so easy even though the neck was a little heavier the headstock was Heavy even without a strap I could just kind of hold it by myself and just walk around and play it it was very nice and so I have to say I was impressed with that now of course I pointed out the shortcomings because one of the things that could really hose up your budget is if you need a lot of repairs they can either be the same price or exceed the price of the guitar and that's why I want to show some how to's whenever I'm doing guitars price like this another thing to point on this guitar is the battery life I had different experiences with that in other words sometimes I feel like I played for weeks turned it on and we just play every time I pick it up and then one day it was just dead so I wasn't sure where it was dying at but I can tell you for sure that I can play two even three hours straight without the battery dying uh definitely two hours for sure uh playing it straight and you won't worry about the batteries dying so overall I have to say that even considering the issues I found the guitar is really good and like I said it was a joy to play I found myself continually playing it all the time and when I bought this guitar I was seriously thinking this was just going to be off get the guitar do the video and then send it on its way however I have to tell you I really enjoyed the guitar and I think I'm gonna hang on to it for a while because like I said I keep going to it as a fast easy fun thing it's just really cool guitar and like I said it takes the abuse and before you guys go I just want you to consider being a subscriber and hitting the Thumbs Up Button they do huge dividends to the channel and they don't cost you a thing however hanging out to the end is the biggest thing you can ever give to me and that's why I want to thank you for your time until the next time know your gear [Music]

Channel: Phillip McKnight

Views: 686,627

Keywords: enya, nova go, enya nova go, know your guitar, know your gear, acoustic guitar, stew mac tools, snark tuner, deep dive, deep dive guitar review, phillip mcknight review

Id: vDUViNXo7kM

Length: 19min 28sec (1168 seconds)

Published: Mon Mar 06 2023