This Cheap Old Guitar Is Better Than You Think

okay so a few days ago a friend of mine dm'd me on Instagram and told me about something that I had never actually heard of before these takamini guitars from the 70s the lawsuit era where they were essentially copying or cloning Martens of the time and my friend Mark who's a professional photographer has one of these guitars and he squares up and down that it is every bit as good as a vintage Martin of the same era and so I started looking around and I found one here at my local Music Go Round in Duluth Georgia they've got it listed for 394 dollars which sounds like too good to be true uh it's from the 70s they don't have too much information on it other than saying it's in good functional condition the preamp pickup combination doesn't work but other than that they say it's all there and the pictures look pretty good so for less than 400 bucks can you really get a guitar that's as good as a vintage Martin I'm gonna go buy this and uh we're gonna find out short video oh that's cool I feel like people still kind of sleep on these a little bit too [Music] oh wait there's another one [Music] so it needs strings but I mean the neck is relatively straight yet this is the one that I saw online so there's actually two of them here God they don't make it easy do they because this one has the pickup in it that's not functioning but I wonder if you could get this this pickup working it'd be cool put it into like an amp or something but [Music] nice [Music] [Applause] [Music] I think this one sounds better [Music] foreign [Applause] yeah this one's definitely more like muted more dead and also this one needs this is going to need a new nut like at some point someone kind of put a nut in there could that just be down to Strings it could be but that guitar here you you play both this guitar like resonates way more than that one so this is the more resonant that's the less oh yeah it is so like it's really dead [Music] I mean it sounds cool like I think it would record well it would do a thing it almost like has a rubber Bridge type sound yeah but it's like it's like it's really dull okay now try this one oh yeah so here's another one uh 12 string version this one perfectly in tune ready to roll I'm not going to take the time to tune this I mean dude look at it like it's let's think about these japanese-made guitars man like even back in the 70s the fit and finish on these things pretty great they even went so far as to clone the takamini Martin style logo in the the back brace there stamping it in I mean I can understand why Martin was uh not super stoked about takamini doing this [Music] under a microphone it sounds like a record and I want to point out I'm using the aea r88 stereo ribbon microphone here and it is going up through the aea rpq3 their own preamp which I have on loan from them I'm testing out and then out of the preamp not using any EQ or anything on board but I am going into a pair of distressors where I'm compressing slightly this is how I would record this guitar I would use a similar mic setup a similar preamp setup I might EQ it a little bit but for the purposes of this video I just want to show you what it sounds like and with these old strings on here I don't know what these strings are or how old they are but they're really dead and warm which is what I like out of an acoustic I can't stand an acoustic with brand new strings on it it sounds a little sterile and I'll fake but this guitar in D standard with these strings on it in front of this microphone it sounds like a record [Music] [Applause] [Music] thank you should we compare it to the bourgeois will you hear me the bourgeois okay so this is not going to be like a fair comparison in any way they're completely different guitars different body shapes different Woods different ages but I am interested to see like what is the difference in like the quality of the sound between these two I paid right around like 370 dollars for this guitar and this guitar I bought 10 plus years ago for three thousand seven hundred dollars so this guitar my Bourgeois slope D is literally 10 times the cost of this old Martin so we'll start we're in D standard for both of these guitars which I like better for most Acoustics I think big body Acoustics like this usually suit themselves pretty well to D standard you just call the talking Mania Martin yeah really yeah you did I said this old Martin I mean dude it looks like just from a distance if you saw this sitting here perched precariously against my piano like that looks like a Martin to me that looks like a 70s Martin HD 28 or d18 I can never get the Martin uh numbers correct [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] [Applause] foreign [Music] all right so completely different in their sounds but I was expecting that I mean there's no reason why these two guitars should sound like each other but I think in terms of quality of sound they're kind of on par with each other the Bourgeois is more articulate it's brighter it's more Airy but sometimes that's not what you want sometimes you want something heavier and warmer and rounder and that's what this is and I don't have a equivalent I don't have an equivalent Martin of the same era to compare this to so maybe we'll do that in the future I think the lawsuit era takamini's of the 1970s are killer if you find one in good condition because it is a almost 50 year old guitar and because they were somewhat budget they might not have been taken care of like the other one we saw in the shop today you know definitely needed some TLC and that other one compared to this one wasn't nearly as good so you want to shop around you want to find a good one but dude budget new guitar from any of the big manufacturers versus this this is it all day and I don't have to feel precious about it it's already scratched up and dinged up it's already lived a rough life it needs a setup it needs some fret work it needs a little TLC but for a guitar to like take on the road or to travel with I cannot believe how good this guitar is foreign [Music] [Applause] [Music] now I don't have an actual Martin of the same year make and model to compare it to but one of my really close friends Tice from the Netherlands has a Martin D28 I think his is a 77 that I've actually spent quite a lot of time playing Tice is roof man I've spent a lot of time playing and making albums with roof man and I can tell you sort of anecdotally playing the two guitars this has the same kind of feel and the same kind of sound as Tyson's vintage guitar now again take that with a grain of salt there are so many variables and I haven't played Tyson's guitar in the better part of a year but for all intents and purposes this is a japanese-made Martin now I'm sure some people are going to argue with me about that in the comments section and that's fine but the point is for less than four hundred dollars I got a vintage acoustic guitar that absolutely sounds like way more than a 400 guitar especially when you compare that to new acoustic guitars that are in that same price range this thing has vibe it's loud IT projects it's not particularly balanced it's really bass heavy there's a lot of low end and low mid information coming from this guitar but you could balance that out with a different set of strings or just change the mic placement whenever you're recording or just EQ it but overall I think this kind of points to a bigger thing which is the beauty of japanese-made guitars everyone knows about you know the Japanese Squires for example the E serial number Squires I used to have one of those strats years and years ago or even my Gretch Black Falcon that's a Japanese made guitar and this takamini point is every Japanese guitar that I've ever owned or played over the years has been great they really know what they're doing over there in Japan when it comes to building guitars and these vintage takaminis these lawsuit eras they have a cult following but I still think they're a little bit underground you can still find a great deal on a vintage japanese-made acoustic guitar that looks and feels and sounds like a Martin and I think that's super cool so this is my new takamini I'm really excited that I found it thank you to my friend Mark whose Velo photo on Instagram for turning me on to this I actually wasn't really aware of these guitars I'm not much of an acoustic player so this lawsuit era takamini thing really flew under the radar for me for years so thank you to mark for uh turning me onto this and I'm really happy with my local Music Go Round the fact that they had not one or two but like three or four of these things in stock to go and play was really really cool I've been sleeping on that place I'm gonna spend some more time over there so go look for a lawsuit era takamini you can probably find a good deal somewhere at a local you know Consignment music shop or online they're really great guitars or at least they can be great guitars your mileage may vary but this particular one is great let me know what you thought about today's video in the comments section down below if you want to support the channel I have a brand new video course on Alternate tunings you can find out more about what's included in that course via the link in the description box and also check out the Inner Circle subscription this is a way to get every single video course that I have made in the past and access to new video courses as they come out more information is linked down below don't forget to subscribe and like it helps the channel out and if you want links to some of the gear that I use in today's video like that beautiful aea stereo ribbon microphone they're the affiliate links in the description box down below my name is retcholl I'm gonna go play my uh old guitar now thank you so much for watching I'll catch you on the next one

Channel: Rhett Shull

Views: 151,956

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Id: bKfckwLBGFE

Length: 13min 47sec (827 seconds)

Published: Wed Jul 19 2023