Seventy Seven Exrubato Custom vs Yamaha SA 2200

[kenhan]

I've been drawn to the Exrubato Custom and SA 2200 lately, and at least on paper they appear very similar in features, price, and review. Has anyone owned both? Or able to comment on how they stack up against each other? Unfortunately, it's not easy to find a SA 2200 around where I live (1 hour north of San Diego) to test it out, and even harder to find an Exrubato Custom. Thanks.

[Jabberwocky]

The Exrubato Custom is an exact ES-355 save the headstock. And sounds like a great ES-355.

The Yamaha SA2200 looks and feels like a Yamaha.

You can't go wrong with either as a player. But I much prefer the Exrubato Custom.

[helios]

There's some pretty nice looking Exrubato Customs on Reverb:

[jzucker]

The Exrubato Custom is an exact ES-355 save the headstock. And sounds like a great ES-355.

The Yamaha SA2200 looks and feels like a Yamaha.

You can't go wrong with either as a player. But I much prefer the Exrubato Custom.

Not quite. The exrubato has a slightly shorter scale than the gibson. I've owned 2 or 3 few SA2200 guitars and several SA2000 guitars. I've always felt that the switches felt cheap to me and while I liked the guitars and felt they played nice, they were somewhat sterile.

Full Disclosure - I'm an endorser for seventy seven...

[Jabberwocky]

From what little I could glean from 77 Guitars, they employed the historically correct Gibson Rule of 18 for determining the position of the frets. That translates into a 24.6" effective scale length (24.594", if you ask Paul Reed Smith) calculated on a base nominal 24.75" scale length.



PS I am not a Deviser Seventy Seven Guitars endorsé. I am sometimes accused of being a shill. But they do make really great guitars.

PPS Riddle me this: protegé, male; protegée, female. But "endorsee" for male and female?(No, no, no more "mentees"; spare the undersea gentle giants some embarrassment from being confused with us.)

[stevus]

True, they make great guitars.

What's wrong with "mentees"?

[kenhan]

Wow, thanks for all the great comments!

Can you comment on post-sale customer support? It looks like Seventy Seven doesn't really have a good USA presence. So if an issue arises, how would one go about resolving it? I imagine Yamaha is a little better in terms of dealer / support network.

Also, whether I end up with 77 or Yamaha, I want it to be the end of my search. (ha!) But, honestly, that's how I felt about every guitar I bought, and at some point I have moved on from all of them. Maybe because I always found something lacking in them. The Suhr Classic S Pro I got last year is the one exception. It's so good that I don't find myself looking at any S-type guitars anymore. So I hope the 77/Yamaha will be like that as well.

But, if I do decide to sell, which would hold its resale value better? That is something of a concern.

Thanks again!

[jzucker]

Wow, thanks for all the great comments!

Can you comment on post-sale customer support? It looks like Seventy Seven doesn't really have a good USA presence. So if an issue arises, how would one go about resolving it? I imagine Yamaha is a little better in terms of dealer / support network.

Also, whether I end up with 77 or Yamaha, I want it to be the end of my search. (ha!) But, honestly, that's how I felt about every guitar I bought, and at some point I have moved on from all of them. Maybe because I always found something lacking in them. The Suhr Classic S Pro I got last year is the one exception. It's so good that I don't find myself looking at any S-type guitars anymore. So I hope the 77/Yamaha will be like that as well.

But, if I do decide to sell, which would hold its resale value better? That is something of a concern.

Thanks again!

If you buy a seventy seven in the USA you will be dealing with one of several distributors in the USA. The guy I dealt with is Eiichi Yamamoto (eastmongo@gmail.com). There's also another guy in this forum who is a dealer for them. IMO, it's better than dealing with a big corporation like yamaha because you can talk to a guy who's closer to the manufacturing chain than if you are dealing with yamaha.

[John A.]

From what little I could glean from 77 Guitars, they employed the historically correct Gibson Rule of 18 for determining the position of the frets. That translates into a 24.6" effective scale length (24.594", if you ask Paul Reed Smith) calculated on a base nominal 24.75" scale length.



PS I am not a Deviser Seventy Seven Guitars endorsé. I am sometimes accused of being a shill. But they do make really great guitars.

PPS Riddle me this: protegé, male; protegée, female. But "endorsee" for male and female?(No, no, no more "mentees"; spare the undersea gentle giants some embarrassment from being confused with us.)

Protegé/protegée means "protected" in French (and can be either a noun or an adjective). French nouns and adjective have gender, which (depending on spelling) is often indicated by adding an e. Endorsee is an English word that looks French-ish, but is not. English does not have gender, except for certain foreign loan-words. Mentee is not a word, period, and people who use it should be wished into the cornfield. Mentor is the name of a character in Homer's Odyssey who protects and advises Telemachus. A mentor is not someone who ments. A mentor is someone who acts like Mentor to a young person in need of some combination of advice, protection, and sponsorship. The term for such a young person is not "mentee" (to the cornfield!) it is protegé or protegée.

John

[Jabberwocky]

The other dealer is Bob aka TopoftheArch here.

[jads57]

A thing to consider is the neck shapes as well.Yamahas I've tried have slim profiles, where as I've seen in comments here and elsewhere 77 Guitars have fairly beefy profile necks.

[Gitfiddler]

A thing to consider is the neck shapes as well.Yamahas I've tried have slim profiles, where as I've seen in comments here and elsewhere 77 Guitars have fairly beefy profile necks.

Oh my! Anything this beautiful AND with a beefy neck profile has pushed it to the top of my list of next guitars to consider!
IIRC, there was also a single cut jazz model with a KOA top that absolutely made my knees weak.

[stevus]

Protegé/protegée means "protected" in French (and can be either a noun or an adjective). French nouns and adjective have gender, which (depending on spelling) is often indicated by adding an e. Endorsee is an English word that looks French-ish, but is not. English does not have gender, except for certain foreign loan-words. Mentee is not a word, period, and people who use it should be wished into the cornfield. Mentor is the name of a character in Homer's Odyssey who protects and advises Telemachus. A mentor is not someone who ments. A mentor is someone who acts like Mentor to a young person in need of some combination of advice, protection, and sponsorship. The term for such a young person is not "mentee" (to the cornfield!) it is protegé or protegée.

John

Some of my mentor students called themselves "mentee", but apparently that is not correct. So thank you for educating me on this.

At the same time, language is a dynamic thing. Whether we like it or not, if sufficient people start using it in their conversations, "mentee" will leave the cornfield and becomes a word.

[stevus]

[/B]Oh my! Anything this beautiful AND with a beefy neck profile has pushed it to the top of my list of next guitars to consider!
IIRC, there was also a single cut jazz model with a KOA top that absolutely made my knees weak.

I own two Seventy Seven guitars and can only say that, in my experience, the neck is really comfortable to play.

The Exrubato Custom in the picture I showed above is also in KOA wood. Looking at it, it still makes my knees weak.

[jzucker]

A thing to consider is the neck shapes as well.Yamahas I've tried have slim profiles, where as I've seen in comments here and elsewhere 77 Guitars have fairly beefy profile necks.

Which is why I ordered mine with the slim neck option. If you ask for the jack zucker model this is what you will get. Mine is also around 6.5lbs