Parkwood PW370M GC

The main specs are online so I'll just cover the ones that stood out for me :)

This guitar is all solid with a wonderfully thin varnish which parkwood refere to as Open Pore Finish. I can't say how much this impacts the sound but it gives the guitar a wonderfully soft look and natural tetured feel.

The fishman SOB pickup system on this model is fantastic. It allows blending between the build in mic and the undersaddle pickup. The tone adjustments/eq and suitably subtle (I hate it when tone controls take you from one unusable extream to the other!)

Onboard tuner is fine for getting started, but I find I always need a couple of minutes by ear (with any guitar!) to get the intonation just right.

Would have liked a second strap knob and Grover tuners would be nicer with real ebony rather than fake.

I went to an superb guitar shop here in the UK (Guitar Village, Farnham) and worked my way through a long list of ??500-??600 guitars (Martins, Breedloves, Guild, Ibanez) and the Parkwood was the last one I tried - it was in a sepereta room with the budget Corts. And I know after the first few chords that I would be taking it home, which I certainly didn't expect! Plugged in the fishman is superb and very flexible - it even has an adjustable notch filter to reduce feedback.

The sounds has lots of clarity with nice firm lows, no dull spots on any string or fret.

The guitar was very well set, nice low action with no buzz. Being 100% solid wood the tiny irregularities are not out of place. The finish is excellent - no blobs of glue visible inside, no marks outside. And the Open Pore finish is very nice.

The guitar seems rock solid but it's not been gigged yet.

Parkwood only supply a gig bag (a rather nice on) which I'd probably use anywhere but a gig!! So I picked up a hard case in addition.

I've been playing 20 years but more seriously for the last 12 months or so :) My last acoustic was a Tanglewood SJ-5 which I believe may have been made in the same factory that Cort currently use for the Parkwoods. The tanglewood was an excellent guitar back in the '90's but this Parkwood in a real step up that will hopefully inspire me improve.

This is the mahogany back and sides model. It includes an awesome three color pro gig bag with super padded straps and pockets. The bag also has pads on the inside for fitting other sized guitars in it. It has the (soft "venetian") cutaway and Fishman Prefix S.O.B. (I believe it means Stereo Onboard Blender) pickup system with tuner and optional stereo/mono functionality. Has an open pore finish on the back and sides that allows for more resonance, tone and projection and a light gloss finish on the top. It's all solid woods: sitka spruce top and mahogany back and sides. The tuners are chrome Grover with Ebony knobs. It has subtle and tasteful ornamentation throughout the instrument from the abalone "Parkwood" and diamond on the black faced headstock to simple, but classy bindings, rosette and inlaid end-pins. The dots on the rosewood fingerboard are small, but not so much that you loose sight of them. This is perfect for me because I don't like huge fret inlays if they're simple dots. There is even a nice stripe down the back and a small "P" on a piece of light colored wood behind the neck at the body/neck joint.

All-in-all I think the features offered with this guitar are insanely good. The guitar feels and looks like a much higher valued instrument. I believe this guitar is a jewel among pebbles. Plus, I'm not into the overblown and ornately decorated guitars out there, I want form and function not a dazzlingly beautiful and overly priced piece of wood with strings.

I give it a 9 only because I'm a realist and never rate things as being perfect. I've only had the guitar for a few days so I'm also waiting to see if any drastic changes or faults pop-up, but honestly, through my experience with almost 30 different guitars during my life, I don't foresee any problems and I'm not just a closet player I really use my instruments for what they were made for: to play!

Would have liked a second strap button, but I rarely rarely play with a strap so it's not a biggy.

I'm going to be using this guitar for a few different applications. One is New Age solo acoustic Windam Hill type stuff in alternate tunings. I will be tapping chords and harmonics and maybe doing some percussive things on the wood, fingerpicking and flat picking. I will also use it for low tuned indo-jazz (Shakti) type stuff, i.e. John McLaughlin "My Goals Beyond" and the like. And I'll be using it for my own brand of singer-songwriter stuff.

This guitar is perfect for all of the above styles. So far, plugged or unplugged this instrument is superb. I recently sold a 2005 Martin OM-16GT that couldn't hold a candle to this guitar. The balance is there all the way across the spectrum of frequencies. The bass could be a bit punchier, but I've learned that too much bass response can saturate the sound of the guitar so I'm kinda glad that that is not the case with this Parkwood. I like the open and harmonic quality of this guitar. Recently, in my search for a new acoustic, I went all over town (Portland, OR) and looked for a new one or possible brand and tried everything from Breedlove and Taylor to Gibson, Tacoma, Larivee and beyond and I must say very few had the qualities that this guitar has and none of them had all of the qualities of this guitar in one package.

I like the pickup system, I like the sound and feel of the instrument plugged or unplugged and I like the look of it very much and that is something that, especially for the price, none of the above mentioned brands are offering me. I have had some feedback issues that were easily resolved with a little tweaking. I play through a Roland AC60.

Again, 9 is pretty much as good as it gets with me and I haven't yet had the time with the guitar to know all of its shortcomings or whether it even has any, but I have owned several Ovations, Ibanez, Dean, Washburn, Takamine, and Martin guitars and this one easily takes the cake.

I was absolutely surprised about the setup of this guitar. I'm not working for them or even care, but I never get guitars (ordered/delivered ones) that have been setup this good. The action is amazing and the intonation is flawless, which, by the way, is never the case for acoustics and if the intonation is out on an acoustic it's really hard to do anything about it yourself even if you're like me and do all your own instrument repairs and mods. I just finished playing it for about 3 hours non-stop, during which I did alternate tunings, standard tunings, tapping and flat picking and it never went out of tune. I don't care who you are, that's amazing for any guitar let alone an acoustic.

The finish is perfect, or at least nothing to complain about. Everything is tight and solid. Frets are all great. The only things wrong with this part of the guitar were two things: the frets (as is the case with any new guitar) are a tiny bit scratchy, in other words, they need to be played on for a while or, like I will do, filed with a very fine bit of sand paper. Scratchy frets tend to scrape a bit when you do bends on them, but it goes away after a while through playing if you don't want to smooth them out with sand paper; the second problem was with some of the wires on the inside. They're usually attached with some double sided tape and a clip or something, but somewhere along the journey to my apartment (probably when UPS's dumb asses were taking it through Minnesota!) it came loose. It still doesn't bother me that much how it is. I shook the guitar and it barely rattles against the back, but this can be a problem when using the internal mic. It's an easy fix and doesn't worry me at all, but I wish I didn't have to deal with it.

The tuners feel and look great. Like I said, I played it for 3 hours plus and had zero tuning problems or intonation issues. The neck is great to play. I think I got lucky with this instrument because it is a perfect match for my hand and grip/style. I was worried about the 1 11/16" nut size, but really it's just as easy to play as my Martin was with a 1 7/8" nut and really it's even better for flat picking while still being easy to fingerpick.

Gonna give it an 8 for the simple fact that the cables on the inside were not perfectly secured. It will be an easy fix and doesn't ruin the playability or sound, but it's a tad annoying and if left alone it could weaken the contact points of the cables.

This guitar will be my main acoustic for live and studio work. I will likely even take it camping with me because I think it'll be fine. Everything seems very reliable and I will use it without a backup.

The finish is one thing I'm not totally sure about. I happen to like the open pore back and sides both for aesthetics and functionality, but I'm not sure about whether or not the life of the guitar will be diminished or enhanced by the finish. The top is fine, no worries.

Don't know, but I've heard good things. The warranty seems average.

I've been playing for 13 years. I'm a classically trained musician/composer/teacher with improve and sight reading ability. I play jazz, fusion, rock, folk, bluegrass, blues... you name it and I mess with it. I've been a gigging professional for 6 years or so around the Northwest as a solo artist and with various bands/projects.

I've been going through a lot of gear lately trying to narrow down my sound and get gear that I like to play on. Right now I have a Michael Kelly archtop, Raven West RG1300ASH, Ovation 1624, Fender Stratocaster, John Peter Bartell classical, and now this wonderful Parkwood PW370M GC. I play through a Fender Hot Rod Deville 410 and a Roland AC60 and have a plethora of pedals and other things I use off and on including a Roland GR33 synth module which I have wired up to 3 of my guitars.

I really feel good about this guitar. When you make purchases like this online it's always really stressful 'cause you never know what it's really gonna be like and you don't want to have to deal with return shipping and RMA's and stuff so it's hard. Lately I've been choosing them wisely based on experience and instinct and I really hit a home run with this guitar. It just feels solid like a great instrument should. The strings vibrate and it feels right. There's no strange weak strings and overly raunchy overtones, it just feels and sounds good.

Like I said above, I did try out a ton of other high quality instruments and never really found 'that' sound. I took a serious gamble on this based on my research and it was a great decision. The cost after a discount I received from Music123 (aka Musician's Friend) was $649.99. At that price this guitar is a steal. Guitars costing upwards of $3000 don't have the playability and features this one has so I am very happy.

I do wish it had a second strap button just for the sake of me having the option. I wouldn't use it often, but I prefer to have the option without using a neck-tie strap. And the unsecured wires on the inside are a bit unnerving, but I'm not pissed about it. They are all tied together just not secured to the guitar somewhere inside.

I didn't give a 10 in any other category, but here it is well deserved. Overall this guitar is a steal-and-a-half. The electronics, the solid woods, the great overall construction, the playability and the sound have all come together in this guitar and produced a very fine instrument indeed.