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11-27-2016, 02:24 PM #76joaopaz Guest
Hi guys! First of all, thanks for all the wonderful replies so far. I got a lot more that I was asking for, initially, which is a great thing.
Let me just clear my intentions about it:
When I started this thread I knew little about the history of D'Angelico, yep.... I had seen the guitars, of course, but never really investigated. Then I saw them new, at a somewhat mid/high price to intruments being made in Asia.... I really liked the design of the guitar and almost all the sound clips I hear.
But in no way was I trying to have a piece of the D'A history, simply because I didn't knew much about it.
I fully agree with the branding thing... now that I now about it, I'd gladly buy this same guitar with a different name in the headstock, if at all possible. Actually, and honestly I'd prefer to do that...
I'm aware of the "phenomena" of course, and when it happens its really a shame because it kinda just stresses the fact that you're not buying the "real deal", while you could simply be buying a great guitar, nevertheless.
Having said that, nothing had me decide so far... I'm just as I was when I started it .. first I really don't "need" another guitar
but you know the drill, I suppose!
Then, if I ever have the chance to try one and it feels right for me, I'd go ahead and buy it no matter what.
What drove me to start this thread was simply to gauge people about how these particular guitars (disregard the name on the headstock) compare with other new guitars in the same price range. The reason why I always mention new is because of the super short used market in my country, so I'd have to buy online... for that I'd rather go with a new one, just being pragmatic about it.
(...)
one note about the setups: the number of my guitars got close to the number of my age before I started selling a lot of them So I HAD to learn to do setups myself, up to the point of doing fret levels, and nothing beyond that (and also no electronics as I suck at that). So the store setup is never an issue for me... I'll will change it no matter what to suit my strings and how I want to feel the guitar.
BUT there was a great point above about the "respect" for the customer in having the guitars shipped with a correct setup - and I fully agree with it.
(...)
And finally, please do keep up with these great post on everything you see fit for the subject and never mind about my "feelings"
I'm a grown man and enjoy this type of feedback a lot more!
Maybe I'll still get a EXL-1 in the end ....
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11-27-2016 02:24 PM
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I remember Russell Malone toured with an "imitation" D'Angelico for a while. Sounded great, looked good, felt good.
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Malone played a Japanese pressed top version.
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11-28-2016, 07:56 PM #79joaopaz Guest
Also, Frank Vignola... not sure about the "generation" ... But looking at the inlays it's not a "4th"
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The Japanese pressed top DA's are still being made in Japan. AFAIK, the rights in Japan to the DA name are held be a different owner than here in the USA. I see new ones for sale on EBay all the time.
John D'Angelico licensed his name for strings and even put his name on electric guitars that he sold where he only made the necks. Jimmy D'Aquisto licensed his name for guitars made by Hagstrom and Fender. The goodwill value of the D'Angelico string brand led to the 90's replicas which in turn led to the Ferolito/Arizona Iced Tea D'Angelico company and the Korean guitars.
Real D'Angelicos are the finest acoustic archtops of all time. The 90's Replicas are superb guitars. I have seen Phil Upchurch perform with a pressed top Japanese DA and it sounded great. I have owned two of the Korean DA's. While I would have to say that they are OK, they are not pro level guitars and therefore do not, IMO, deserve to have the D'Angelico name on the headstock.
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Like many other people here I jumped on this week's blowout pricing at Guitar Center, buying a D'Angelico Excel Series EXL-1 for $599. I've been paying close attention to the prices on this guitar for several months, waiting for a blonde version to be featured on the MF SDOTD. I've passed on the VSB and the Blue ones for $699. I was holding out for a blonde. When the $599 price came along as a Doorbuster Deal, I went directly to my local GC and played two specimens, a blonde and a vintage sunburst. Both were nice guitars for the money and either one of them would have been fine, if they weren't so shop-battered. I went to GC thinking I wanted a blonde, but in person the VSB just seemed nicely different from all of my blonde guitars. The VSB model in the store had a binding issue on the headstock, so instead of buying it off of the rack, I placed an order through GC for delivery of a VSB model to my home. It was a good plan ... or so I thought ...
GC shipped to me an EXL-1 in the sealed factory packaging. Upon receiving it and unpacking it everything seemed fine. Fit and finish in general were excellent. The neck had a little relief in it, it played fine but the action was kind of high. (nothing that couldn't be adjusted.) The bridge had a little bit of gap between the bridge and the body in the center of the bridge, so that it was resting on the outer edges and I could see light under the mid section. That could be fixed with a little sanding. There was nothing else wrong with the guitar. It played fine and sounded fine. My strobe tuner confirmed that bridge location was pretty good with decent intonation going up the neck. But when I was tuning it up the tuners weren't exactly where the felt like they should be -- when reaching for them, they felt like they were out of place. Of course, that might be expected when you're playing a new guitar for the first time, but when I looked at the back of the headstock I saw this:
Look at the alignment of those tuners. Not one pair is properly aligned. I know it's a minor issue, but it's driving me crazy. I'm thinking that if I can't live with them being that far out of line then I have only two options:
1) reject the guitar and ask for a replacement and take the risk of getting something that's worse, or
2) fix it myself and void my warranty
I suppose that "live with it" would be a 3rd option, but this issue just bugs me. It's a material problem with the quality of workmanship that has ruined my NGD.
Aargh. Has anyone else had a similar problem? What would you do if you unboxed a brand new guitar and your NGD turned out like this? After all of the anticipation I've found my D'Angelico WTF-1 to be somewhat of a let down. Just for reference, my old Epiphone Emperor Regent is basically the same guitar and it is flawless, without a single manufacturing defect.
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another pic. the grid isn't centered, but the horizontal lines make it easy to see how far off the tuner alignment is.
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The S1600xxx.. model that I got during the GC blowout sale has some of the same skew with the same tuner..but maybe not quite as bad to my eyes.. Also the bridge is nearly all the way down on the bass side and almost similar on the treble side, but any lower action results in buzz so it doesn't appear to be an issue.
In the other thread, the LeftoverVisuals vids were mentioned. I listened/looked again at some vids and it does sound very similar to the one I have, (if I can imagine he were playing mine, ha-ha..)..also the inlays and binding appear to be the same as the model we are discussing and not the described 7 layers of the more pricey Deluxe version.
Anyway, I am more than pleased with this guitar and deal:-).
Regards,
Eddie
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Thanks for responding. Does your S1600xxx model from the blowout only have ONE tuner that's out of alignment? If you look closely, none of mine are properly aligned. None of the matching pairs are actually matched. Every pair has one tuner that's out of alignment.
That G string is so far out of alignment that it just jumps out at you. It should be rotated clockwise so that the tuner isn't pointing so far down.
The B string is also out of alignment with the A string. Notice that they're both rotated counterclockwise from the vertical position, where they should both be centered vertically so that the tuning pegs stick out horizontally parallel to the grid lines.
The E strings aren't even aligned. The low E seems to be rotated farther toward the midline than the High E.
They managed to not get one pair of tuners mounted symmetrically.
If I were manufacturing these guitars en masse, then I'd have a jig for drilling the holes and aligning the tuners so that this kind of poor workmanship would never happen. The sloppy appearance of these tuners tells me that they aren't using a jig. They're allowing people to eyeball the tuner alignment and they aren't going a very good job. This is just sloppy workmanship, and it makes me wonder about corners that might have been cut inside of the guitar that I'm not able to see. The question that I'd really like to have answered is whether all of the 2016 guitars are this bad. If that's the case, are the earlier production guitars any better? I'm wondering if all of the late production guitars were made in a half-assed fashion in anticipation of blowing them out at the GC sale. If that's the case then a refund for exchange isn't likely to help to improve things for me.
Aargh.
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My 2013 EXL-1
My 1951 Gibson Super 300 darn they couldn't even get the serial number on there straight - jk!
It actually looks to me the dimensions on my EXL-1 headstock at the finial cutout are different
WillLast edited by WillMbCdn5; 11-11-2017 at 10:17 PM.
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I ordered a EXL-1 from ZZounds on Oct. 20, 2017 ($1399) that came with the pick guard mounted crooked. I sent it back.
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wow - tough crowd
) just loosen one screw and adjust the pickguard to where you want it and re tighten the screw the bracket has a slotted hole to allow for exactly that adjustment.
Will
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I'm pretty confident that loosing one screw and setting the pickguard where you wanted it and re tightening the screw would have solved both issues. Whatever happened to a bit of ingenuity and common sense ? geesh are we so pampered that we can't even deal with the basics of adjusting the tools we use when they have those adjustments built into the design. It's not a repair it is an adjustment.
That is almost like saying you sent back a guitar because it had 12-54 strings from the factory and they were too light or heavy.
I have camera bodies that cost several times the cost of that guitar that use lenses I own that cost several times the cost of that guitar which have adjustments built in to fine tune the focus because it is understood that camera bodies and lenses even at the highest level have room for adjustment for optimal performance . So cost has no relevance to the issue.
Will
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I ordered one as well and the tuners are not perfectly aligned on mine either. But, the goal is clearly to match the angle of the tuner button to be perpendicular the to edge of the peghead. My G tuner looks just like yours (being noticeably more rotated than the D tuner across from it). It bugs me too.
But, the wood on this guitar is too amazing--deeply quilted back is just insane and the sides look three-dimensional. The spruce on the top is so tight-grained and has lots of swirl like on a finely carved boutique instrument. I know this is a laminate knockoff, but no way will I send it back for a replacement. I looks better than any I've seen. And it sounds phenomenal. So, I'm going to live with the misalignment of the G tuner.
I will say the case leaves much to be desired. Pretty cheap. But, for $599, I can live with this. At some point I may fill the screw holes, rotate the tuners and re-drill the anchor holes.
Oh, and make sure to bend your angle bracket on the pickguard mount to ensure the pickguard is floating. Many have received their Excels with the pickguard mashed against the body, It's supposed to be elevated roughly parallel to the strings with about 1/4" gap between the bottom of the volume pot and the spruce top of the guitar.
Enjoy your EXLs everyone!
RoliLast edited by rolijen; 11-12-2017 at 01:29 AM.
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If my $599 WTF-1 had come with a pickguard that was canted, probably I would have just straightened it, because it's a simple nut and bolt adjustment. If I had paid another $900 for the guitar then out of principle I would have sent it back just like you did.
Originally Posted by RuffRider
This tuner problem is different though -- it's not an easy fix that I can do by loosening a nut on a bolt, sliding the pickguard over and re-tightening, or running focus calibration on a DSLR. Focus calibration is intended to be a user performed task, while drilling holes in a headstock to relocate tuners is not. Moving the screw hole location for the tuners amounts to an unauthorized repair by someone other than a factory authorized repair center, which will void my lifetime warranty.
In this case I'd have to drill 5 or 6 new holes, plug the old ones, and then deal with extra holes being exposed on the headstock. Some refinishing would be necessary. then there's the problem that anything that I'd have to do to fix the problem would void my lifetime warranty. I don't think it's fair for a buyer to be put in a bind like that.
I'm thinking that the guitar needs to be exchanged, but before I do that I'd like to get a feel for what the other 2016 guitars look like since GC has just blown through most of their stock and I'd probably end up getting a late production 2016 or a 2017 model as a replacement.
Does anyone else have messed up tuners? Are they this bad? I'm thinking that there's no point in going through the trouble of a return if they're all like this. any photos to compare would be helpful. Thanks.
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Agreed re- aligning/re- setting tuners is a different issue than adjusting a pick guard angle/position. I wasn't suggesting otherwise. I'm curious if you agree that your headstock and my 2013 headstock appear to have different dimensions? Perhaps suggesting that there have been some design changes along the way. Originally Posted by BeBob
I
This tuner problem is different though -- it's not an easy fix that I can do by loosening a nut on a bolt, sliding the pickguard over and re-tightening, or running focus calibration on a DSLR. Focus calibration is intended to be a user performed task, while drilling holes in a headstock to relocate tuners is not. Moving the screw hole location for the tuners amounts to an unauthorized repair by someone other than a factory authorized repair center, which will void my lifetime warranty.
In this case I'd have to drill 5 or 6 new holes, plug the old ones, and then deal with extra holes being exposed on the headstock. Some refinishing would be necessary. then there's the problem that anything that I'd have to do to fix the problem would void my lifetime warranty. I don't think it's fair for a buyer to be put in a bind like that.
Will
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the headstocks are definitely different. yours is taller, narrower and the top has a steeper slope. the cutouts are also more open and are perfectly rounded. your tuner alignment also looks a lot better.
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If I had got a nice one as Rolijen did I would keep it and attempt to realign the tuning machines meself. It is not difficult but bothersome and voids the warranty. For $599 instead of its original $1399, consider it B-stock.
Take good quality toothpicks, some Loctite Superglue, plug up the old holes. Tape down the spot around the holes with 3M Scotchtape. Cut off the excess toothpick with a sharp X-Acto blade. Sand it down with an extra-fine emery board. Dropfill with black nail polish. It is polysomething so nail lacquer won't hurt the finish. Let the lacquer dry. Sand the nubs down or scrape them down with a sharp blade. Remove tape. With a pinvise, start new holes for the tuning machines.
Done!
It would look acceptable. And in six months of playing it when you put on your own dings and marks you would not really care that the tuning machines had to be recentred.
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Here are a few pics. My tuners are a little askew but not as badly as BeBob’s. I see his point about drilling given the warranty and all. Seems like there are plenty of these EXL-1s in their warehouse. So, unless you’ve bonded with it, where’s the harm in asking for an exchange for a proper one. I couldn’t let mine go and will live with the poor alignment of the tuners.
Here are a few pics:
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Here's a different model showing some tuner misalignment. Probably those Asian kids get tired and sloppy near the end of a 12 hour shift.
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I'd return a defective one. There was nothing wrong with your money.
I bought one of these almost two years ago. It is a nice instrument. I paid a bit more than the GC blowout, but not full price. Buying something that is listed as a second is okay. You know what you are getting. Otherwise a discount is just less $ for the same product.
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When I considered adjusting that pick guard I took into account that the pick guard was not loose and had just slipped out of place. The holes that the screws are in have probably been expanded out of shape so that in the future the holes would be unable to hold the screws tightly (stripped - wood). The floating pickup is mounted to the pick guard - not the neck... Moving the pick guard also means moving the pick up. Originally Posted by WillMbCdn5
I did not want to take the chance of more problems developing with the guitar and I after I had done work on it myself I would I been prevented from returning it by the store.
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You would also run into some very tacky two-sided tape in the process. The width of the pickup has it and a couple guitarists reported it under the pickguard, too.
Mine was a tad off kilter and I enjoy working my gear so it was not that big of deal to me. If mine looked as bad as yours, I know the guys at my local shopped would have fixed it before I picked it up. They did swap out the tailpiece as it was marred.
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Drop your little grid on these, two high end replicas of D'Angelico guitars.
It's the shape of the headstock that makes installing the tuners exactly "correct" look off. I made jewelry a lot of years. I cut my own stones and worked with wholesale gem dealers. Their customers really like me waiting on them because as a jeweler when they asked for 50 5mm garnet cabochons I'd sit there picking out matched pairs because they were mostly for earrings, or pieces where the stones were mounted on either side of a larger gem. Set side by side a set of earrings has to look perfectly matched in color and height. But like the "from the front of the headstock" argument I'm trying to make no one would notice they're not perfectly exact because they on either side of a face.
Hey if you want a perfect guitar, go out and buy a $7500.00 Triggs New Yorker.
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Looks like they did it by hand, trying to get the rod of the tuner perpendicular to the edge of the headstock -- which exposes the maximum amount of tuner - to make it as easy as possible to tune. Some of them are clearly asymmetrical, although in some of the pics, the headstock itself looks asymmetrical. Maybe that's just the pic, though.
Since it doesn't look like it affects the functioning of the guitar, and since it looks like QC is such that your replacement could have worse problems, I'd think about refund maybe more than exchange.
But, if I liked the guitar, I'd just forget about it.
OTOH, I'd return one with the bridge all the way down on one side.
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