BoSoxBiker

It looks awesome, BK! Congrats! It is sooooooooo funny about how long it takes to re-acclimate oneself to an improved guitar. Anything more than a string change and it takes me days to get used to it.

That is very nice, indeed!

Lars, thanks again for posting the link. I've been watching bits and pieces of random episodes ever since. Good way to kill 15 minutes during a finger break or something. That was the initial reasoning. Watching and listening to Jason and Seth have helped by way of example. Since I've been watching, I've made several adjustments to my own playing positioning and techniques, and have added a few songs I'd not heard of before to my chord-sheet folder. This past few weeks has resulted in as big of a playing and singing improvement as I've had in a long time.

I like it, but I I do like the extra bling, normally. Is it me, or do the gold tuners look a bit off? I was surprised that this went for $69xx in the end. I would have guessed closer to $10k. Then again, the estimated value was $6500. Do these SJ-200 super-blingers ever get abalone around the neck on the top like on a D-45, or is the pick-guard shape and positioning too sacred to allow?

57 people watching that one and already over $800. Could get interesting. 🙂

I looked 5-10 years ago on two occasions. About the only thing I saw was more suited for a flea-market. One of our Austrailian friends, when not fighting over TP, has come up with an occasional player recently. It's a lost thing around these parts, though.

I thought it was excellent. The whole thing was well done and smooth. Kudos!

ha! My bad. I got all cross-eyed and finger twisted. The Taylor is a 614CE.

Very nice, Reg!

This matches my experience.

Joe M - Do you keep them in the case when not in use? Do you always use a humidifier, such as a sound hole humidifier? Same playing space? My stable is all newish. A 2015 Taylor d-41, two 2018 (hummingbird and SJ-200) and a 2019 Martin D-41. The 2015 took a couple years to open up, but I blindly followed my then favorite guitar store department manager's advice and did the sound-hole humidifier 100% the time and the tone went to crap because it was a humid year on a record-breaking scale. Took me all Summer to fix it, though I took small, deliberate steps. The first 2018 opened up this year, not two months ago. The second is solid, but easily susceptible to humidity changes. (This and the 2015 are Maples). The 2019 was new to me in October. It's a Martin, which followed suit with the whole "first day you own a new Martin is the worst it will ever sound" speech from the head Martin dude. I did not see that interview until recently, though, but it did follow suit. Day-1 was scary at first, but two hours later the low end started to appear. Over two weeks of being played daily and sitting in a stand, it began to open up and come to life. The improvement was so much that I did not change the factory strings out until several months had passed. I do a rotation of my 4 nice acoustics. One week on the stand, 3 weeks in the case. I do pull them out as desired, but back into the case they go when finished. Each Sunday night I change out guitars. That night, they sound as if they are holding a little but back. It never until the next day that the sound comes roaring out of them. I know tons of folks have theirs in cases when not in use and many more never put them in cases, choosing room humidifier controls and such. Perhaps at some point in a guitars life it will not matter anymore, but mine are all like this. The speculation I read that makes the most sense is that they like to be played and having them played and out of cases helps the wood breath better. Who knows? That said, each of them sound their most distinct when they are at their best. I've not even talked about guitar setup, strings, picks and all of that. That's well covered in the sticky thread about tone. Then there is the natural tendency of a player to adjust their playing subtleties and dynamics in real-time to match what they think they should be playing. The room matters a TON. Reflections can be harsh and sibilant, ruining natural sweetness of guitars. In the end, though, and with all that considered, there was some sort of combination of guitar aging and natural ear development that did the trick for me.

Congrats on your good fortune, as it appears so far. I'm somewhat anxious now to read what you hear from Gibson. Hopefully some nice pics, too. 🙂

I like your Dove recordings, too. the second one is especially more transparent for whatever reason. Both exhibit nice piezo blends. Again, the second one being better IMO. On the Taylor strap part of our chat, the bottom strap button has limited space for a strap of any thickness to fit. It's nothing like the strap button on my other acoustics. It's built into the input jack system. I cannot unscrew, and therefore, replaced. The medium-low thickness straps do the best for me, while the thinnest ones with the slits seem to come right off. At last check, nobody made a reasonable strap lock for it. My Taylor is a 2015. Perhaps they've improved that aspect. I've not looked.

What's the sound system in the Maton? The Taylor battery is easy replacement, but that end pin makes it impossible for a decent strap lock. Never seems to be a perfect thing.

Night and day difference. Just as an example, the little burst of a riff at :22 would have done awful things to the sound on the Martin system. I've heard that martin system online before in Martin demos. Seems like it's right on the edge of being overloaded even when played with light touches. Overall sound is nice, but has defects galore in the lows and low mids. This maton system is great. No questions at all. Just great.

There's some wicked awesome stuff posted here from time to time that I'm almost ashamed to say I had not heard before. He's up there. Especially the song Paul14 posted. I caught my attention due to the Devil in the title as does the current song I'm working on. There are some lines in his song that I wish I had written. Every songwriter has that feeling from time to time. Anyhow, thanks to everyone for posting these links and threads of the lesser known types. Some great gems out there. And thanks to PickItPaul(OP) for this thread.

A centimeter? Dang! My thoughts were similar to 62burst's, but that centimeter thing sounds like a ton. Good luck with it all.

She rode the strings hard. A very controlled result, too. Nice. I did pick up the room ambience. I'm still trying to build it myself. That room, along with whatever reverb(s) may have been in use, did great to stop as to not clutter things. Nice bright, but tamed early reflections. I can never pick out what's room verses what's reverb unless it's extreme. Here voice didn't appear to me like it had any sort of excessive tail going on, which helped make the sound so good throughout. (IMO)

I agree there was room for a bigger bottom. It was nice to hear this, though. My headphones (Focal Elegia running through a cheap DAC) do well at digging out tone and seperation below 200Hz that others present as more typical low-end energy and bounce. A more extreme example of that build up is the modern-day Bose low-end energy build up. Essentially, these fit this video perfectly. Funny, this sound reminded me a little bit about the Cleartone EQ strings I tried on my Hummingbird (modern-day standard) The bottom was there, but it was hard to make it dominate. I put a regular set on it two weeks ago and there it was.

Perhaps it's my headphones, but I thought the sound on the first video that MissouriPicker posted was very good. The low end may have not been thick, but it was very mature and push/let everything else pop into focus without having to scream. I very much enjoyed that performance a great deal. (by "mature", I mean the low-end supported the low-mids instead of being so dominant as to avoid shouting out "look at me!!!". Not too thick, in other words.)

Very cool and nice, Buc. I agree with the sentiment on your venture up the neck. I'd not seen that blue guitar. Without my reading specs on, that bottom cutout looked like Texas to me. Figured it out right before the Outro.

Nice again. The one a night or two ago with the SJ put in a creative mood. I finished writing one song, worked on another and started a 3rd during a moment of distraction.

An update on this. It's still an ongoing setup project. This truss rod and neck situation has a mind of it's own. When in factory specs of somewhat near .010 relief, the truss rod has no tension on it if I was to turn it slightly. It's as it loose. Doing the knock test does reveal some truss rod rattling. This decreases in either direction as I turn the truss rod. The dual-action truss rod is nifty, but is proving to have some quirks. So, turning left - It behaves decently on the lefty-tighty front to a point. At that point, turning it further left increases the bow. I can still hear the truss rod rattle on the knock test, though reduced. On turning it back to no tension and then to a righty-tighty thing, to get any tension at all is to being be way past factory spec, but still with-in a more generic or traditional window of acceptance. That is, of course, providing other factors are all in good states. My truss rod is set to .003 relief ATM. It is .004 and below that this guitar comes close to playing and feeling like a guitar costing 5-10x it's cost, but only so when the strings are down to 3/64th at the12th fret. The really odd part is that any combination of neck relief and string height that is larger than those I've described results in a noisier guitar, and one that becomes "stringy" to play. The sources of the noises vary. At times it's the truss rod being not tight enough in the neck. At other times, it's pure fret interference. My preference for guitar neck relief is a few thousandths above it's lowest point of playing well, and string height about .5/64 (1/128) higher than it perfect lowest spot. This is to make up for weather changes and humidity fluctuations. Impossible so far with this one. And so it sits on a stand for a few more days to settle in from yesterday's activities. I am hopeful that it stays in it's current state. I have a feeling this one will end up being one of those that lives out it's day with the truss rod cover in a little baggie. The tweaker's delight.

I didn't know the story either, but it is a very good tune. Well done as always, too. I've especially been enjoying the overall tone with this one and the last one, David. Just the new room, or did you make some other changes?

I know we're on two different ends of the music making food chain, but my SJ is first choice in my "studio", too. My other Maple makes it sometimes for picking things, but doesn't get out of the way like Gibson Maples do.