Unlikely NGD

**omphalopsychos** · Today, 10:47 AM

I’ve been thinking about having a portable guitar that you can easily take on the road or onto a plane that has good tone and playability. After some research and initial aversion to headless guitars I found this model by kiesel that is more classic looking than many of their other models: Delos Headless.

I got lucky and found one for a great price used on guitar center online with attractive specs:

Alder body
alnico 2 pickups
10” fretboard radius
”Thicker” neck profile

I’m not crazy about the look of the black pickups and hardware, but I have to say I am very impressed by the quality and playability of this guitar. It is full scale length (25.5”) and sits comfortably on my lap. I did not find the missing headstock to impact my ability to fret chords down on the neck (think Fm7). This one has jumbo frets, which I don’t think I’ve played before. They’re wonderful. Great fretwork.

The pickups sound good. They could be better but I don’t want to go into experimentation to find better ones. To me they sound like a slightly hotter and brighter 57 classic. I just lowered the pickups further from the strings and roll back the tone knob a bit and it produces a very nice sound for jazz. The bridge pickup is bright and it can definitely rock also. It has a 5 way switch for split coil sounds. Works great even for funk. Quite a versatile guitar.

One thing I found funny is that this “thicker” neck profile, which the prior owner must have special ordered because it’s not a standard option, is still very slim compared to what many of us are used to on our vintage archtops. I can’t help but laugh thinking about how daintily metal heads’ hands must move around the delicate neck on Kiesels with regular or thin profiles.