Crafter Key West High Gloss

Sitka spruce top, indian rosewood back and sides. Dreadnaught /Cut.
A wonderful optic, by an ???orange??? gloss and a tortoise pickguard which
is featured by a tortoise inlay in the soundhole inlays. All the inlays
would give a fine shell light if you pose it on stage. Nice! Nut 45 mm.
This guitar has a clear great tone with strong mids, it???s excellent for
soloing and for loud powerful fingerpicking, but if you strumm it you
might be surprised over a lack of energy. To me it was rather poetic,
to hear a great tone but then realize that it won???t help the singer???s voice.
This kind of lacking energy I mean is about ???sustain and warmth???, too.
The tone is strong, in spite of that it did not ???sing??? (if you do a light
tremolo in soloing you???ll have a ???sing??? for shure!) and ???bright crisp???.
I suppose the high gloss finish is kinda reason for this. Or my voice (-:
The neck is a three piece like most of Crafter guitars are.
It is satin finish or similar and by the way fast for everything you
wanna do unless it is stopped by the white binding or ???yellow feelings???.
The top is a two piece, I guess, like the back, the woods look fine,
the anual rings were not so thin as usually / in a cedar top. But I don???t
know if this is a great sound attitude, the back had ring holes on both
sides, which were good for optics and part of the construction idea.
If you don???t play jazzy chords or ballads for comping, it might be your
favorite guitar as long as you only work by playin??? it and won???t use
it as a songwriter???s guitar. That???s my personal opinion. So you find
the jazz chords more clear and fresh than typically western. Good!
Whatever the T-bracing means, to me it???s a strong tone, more in the
direction of a jazz guitar than a western crispy strumming action.
This makes less guitar vibrations on the back I guess.
You won???t feel ???country??? but it leads you magically to new blues ideas
and gives you some advices for powerful flat pickings.
The saddle and the bridge aren???t done very well, it???s cheap plastic,
(if you knock your fingernails on it, it sounds like wood)
and if you tune it with bone, you might get a sound which could be
near the mids of cedar top. I heard a lot of cedar top guitars like
Sandpiper, Takamine or LAG 300 in the last two years, and they all
had more crisp and ???presence paper???, but they were tuned with quite
better saddle and bridge, although the LAG was a very light sounding
guitar with a presenced D-String. With the Key West I was restless
for one day and than decided to give it back. I was not shure about
modifying a bone tone or strings etc.... to this clear tone.
In addition to this all I commend the LR-S Timber plus electrics
as not enough for such a natural sound. A presence knob is really lacking,
and the scoop volume makes no sence at all for me. Treble and mids
don???t work really properly with each other. Additonally, I had a
Crafter Richmond on test with a new element hybrid LR Baggs, with
3 knobs of B, M, T and volume only, but this was a cool preamp,
which nearly could do something like rasguedo. So there are differences
in the Crafter/Baggs areas. With the Key West I got only one or
two sounds I really liked. The electrics don???t do better crisp than the
natural sound as you often have in Takamine electrics. It sounds very
single tone based. The Tuners are open light tuners and for all people
who think this is an advantage I must say, it makes me wondering.
There???s a writing on it which says ???Akkord???. What does it mean?
Too much wondering is not good if you add all together and see
this is not the right thing (for me, here as a songwriter and player).

Sound: 7 Electrics: 6 Action: 8-9

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