Eastman Guitars T145

This is a Eastman T145

The sound was great, all solid wood, very light weight and that is the main reason I got the guitar, I have 4 ruptured disk in my neck and can't handle a heavy guitar. The guitar when played acustic is almost as lound as my Acustic guitar, very good.

The thing that ruined the whole guitar was this. I'm a luithier and when the guitar came it the frets were horrible. The ends where they had been snipped off had not be polished and would cut your fingers like a rasor. The buzz and raddle from the frets were just horrible. I decided to keep the guitar and level the frets, (which I have been doing for 30 years and I am very good at it). I mask the fingerboard off as always did the fret work which took about 3 hours to get really dressed. When I begin to take the masking tape off the finish came off with it. Remember masking tape not duck tape. Of course that voided the warrenty. For the next two weeks any kind of touch to the guitar completely took the finish down to the wood. I've owned $8000 dollar Foster guitars and others and after years of playing, no dings or anything such as this. The best Eastman would do was send me back $250. I've owned it for about 8 months, it looks as if it were 20 years old with heavey playing. Other than that, which is major the guitar is great. If you plan on buying this modle, BEWARE! There is no way I can sell it because it looks so bad. Very unhappy with Eastman.

This guitar has some nice features. Solid spruce top, solid maple back and sides, three piece maple neck, ebony board with very little dot inlays, binding all over..gold gotoh tuners, steel tailpiece with ebony decoritive cover, ebony fingerrest, cheap armstrong p-ups that work fine..gibson style tapered vintage knobs..input on bottom side of guitar..this guitar is very thin, like a 335, maybe thinner, but te arch maes it about double the width at the center..very nice carving job..gold hardware..i give it an eight because its a standard set-up..no coil taps or anything or spectacular inlay job..

I had been playing semi-hollows and I wanted a more natural complex sound, but didn't want to buy a plywood Gibson. I immediately fell in love with the sound although this guitar I thought was a little to fancy for me, because I hate binding. I'm a minimalist with guitar design..but I love the dots instead of big gaudy block inlays. The sound is very complex; all the way up to the higher registers it sounds thick and the overtones and harmonics are incredible..it has a natural reverb to the tone unlike any production hollow bodies like Gibson or ibanez or guild. Eventually I decided that it can't really be that good, its chinese, right? So I bought a 2000$ Tacoma archtop and a 3000$ Knysh custom archtop and both couldn't live up to the tone of this guitar so I put them right up on ebay and kept this!! I think the secret is a very thin top and back..some say its fragile, but it makes for a very sweet tone and alot of response. I don't think one can say its thin because they are cheap buiders, because it is carved from a thick piece of wood, so if anything it is more work to make it thinner. Many other archtops have thick tops which deaden the tone..this one is so complex, I can't say enough. It is getting better too. The bass is a little weak acoustically, but electrified, it makes for a great balance and it is getting better with time...

well, the frets aren't perfect..they were't polsed from the factory and the cuts aren't the greatest I've seen, but it's handmade, and this doesn't effect tone, its purely cosmetic. The binding is high quality stuff. The inlay dots are perfectly placed..no black gle to hide mistakes..the action from Jeff Hale music was great, but its a brand new guitar and some buzzing is present ad I need anoter set-up but this is with any guitar. The one thing that is odd is te height of the bridge. The adjuster are all the way up and the bridge is very high due to te pitch of the neck being quite dramatic, but everything is set up accordingly ie: the pickups and mounting braqckets as well as the pick guard are all consistent with the high bridge ad dramatic pitch. This may contribute to the great tone too..who knows? I'm thinking about replacing the ebony bridge with a tune-o-matic..not sure.

The great tone comes with a price...delicacy. The wood on the body cannot take a drop..The three piece neck seems very strong but is also very very thin. The guitar is very compact. Treat this baby with care!

OH MY GOD!!! Amazing! I bought a prototype of this guitar for 1000 from Jeff Hale. It had the 15th fret markers on the 14th fret, yet the binding dots were correct...When eastman found out..they took back the prototype and sent me out a brand new production model guitar hassle free. The new one was much nicer than the old prototype! They apologized and said they were embarrassed. You have to realize that although they have been building stringed instruments for years, frets are a new thing for them!

Amazing value..some things aren't "perfect" but this is a handmade guitar. Most importantly...the tone of this instrument is better than the many others I tried at double and even 5x the cost. The thinline offers a beautiful sweet yet full archtop tone with feedback rejection (its small) and extreme comfort! I recommend eastman to anyone. They look very sharp too..