mnb

I'd have given this 5 stars if the two humbuckers had coil splits. With two great Seymour Duncan humbuckers and a pretty nice Godin single coil in between them, this guitar can access a good variety of electric sounds. But it also has a piezo pickup for acoustic sounds (with separate volume, bass, mid, treble) as well as a hexaphonic pickup and 13 pin system to connect to Roland Guitar Synthesizers like the GR-33 or GR-55. The locking tuners work well. It has a Tusq nut, but I still think a little lube would help with tuning stability. I had to do a bit of setup on mine, but once you set the saddles and truss rod to your liking, it plays very nicely. I like the tremolo. It has more range than a Fender, a good solid feel and it's not overly sensitive and fluttery like a Floyd Rose. Overall a very nice guitar and for the features, nicely priced. I'd much prefer a hard case to the typical Godin gig bag, but lugging it upstairs today, with a Katana Air in hand as well, I was kinda happy it was in the bag. So maybe there is a decent use for a gig bag after all. I'm very protective of my instruments, what can I say? The LGXT and LGX both have fancier wood finishes and are several hundred dollars more, but I think the xtSA is more versatile. Note: only the Special Edition has the dual Seymour Duncan Humbuckers. The standard xtSA has Godin Humbuckers.

McCloud is a small custom shop. I bought this on Reverb. It's basically a Tele, but with TV Jones Filtertron type pickups (think Gretsch) and a Bigsby tremolo. The controls are dirt simple: volume, tone, 3 way switch. There's no coil taps, but filtertrons aren't very hot humbuckers, so splitting the coil would probably make it too cold. It has a great sound, I love the bigsby and the playability with the stainless steel frets is just awesome. This is one of a kind and very special.

This guitar is gorgeous, plays well, sounds awesome and is versatile. But it has a fatal flaw. I've owned two of these and both have a buzzing that I think comes from the bridge pins on the body. It's not the bridge as it's a solid bridge. It's very noticable fretting a full 6 string harmonic strum rather strongly. It comes and goes, but I can't play for 10 minutes before I can hear the built in fuzz box on my notes and chords. I'm not sure it can be fixed without radical surgery. Odd thing is, my White Falcon has the same bridge base/pin setup and doesn't have the problem at all. But it doesn't have the TV Jones pickups or the tonal options of this Penguin. If I can find a really good repair shop to fix this up, I'd gladly get it fixed it the cost wasn't absurd, because I do really love this guitar. It's a work of art. Update: I haven't investigated this but I was noticing when loosening the truss rod on another guitar that a somewhat similar buzz started. So I need to slot a little time to see if a slight tightening of the rod on the Gretsch solves the problem.

This guitar feels soooooo good to play. It's got great tone from those humbuckers and very flexible electronics for coil tapping and out of phase, etc. The aluminum case sucks twofold. It's an anchor that weighs a ton and there's no lid for the pocket, so what ever you stash in the case falls out if you open the case and it's not flat on the ground or a table. I'd much have preferred a traditional, lighter case with a stash pocket with a lid. The robo tuners are an interesting idea. They worked great for a month or two, but now, they clearly aren't quite accurate enough. I don't play that often, so the strings shouldn't need changing, although web searches say changing the strings will help. I'm pretty sure I'm going to chuck the robo tuners eventually and install standard tuners if I can find some drop in replacements. The robo tuners have a high ratio, so if you tune manually, you have to turn it A LOT to get a pitch change. And one side is backwards. But tuned up and ready to play, you don't care. Playing this guitar is such a wonderful experience. The feel of the neck, the excellent fret work, bends are like butter, that classic les paul tone. Wow. It's really hard not to love this guitar. It gets 5 stars despite a stupid case and the dumb robo tuners because it's just that awesome of a guitar.

I thought the 3 pickups would be more versatile, but the switching doesn't really give much variety in the sound. The neck is pretty narrow, so the string courses are close together. I find a simple strum often caused the strings to bang against each other, creating an unpleasant sound. There's a wider nut you can use to alleviate that, but I haven't got one installed yet. It makes that great, classic Rick 12 string sound and looks great doing it, too. If I were to buy another, I'd probably go for the 360/12 instead.

Your classical guitar will sounds its best with Augustine strings. A fellow player turned me on to these way back in the 80s and compared to the run of the mill brands I'd tried that were available in music stores (La Bella being one), these are leaps and bounds better. There is a warmth to the unwound strings and a nice bite to the wound ones that give a rich, full sound. They make them in various tensions, but I've only tried the blues (regular tension treble strings, high tension bass). I would think lower tension bass might buzz too much, especially with my heavy handed style.