Gold Tone PB-GRE

All the features are mentioned in other reviews or on the goldtone website, so no use in being redundant here.

Great guitar for bottleneck blues. I play Sort of a mix between Johnny Winter, Ry Cooder and Watermelon Slim. Unplugged sounds preety close to the Nationals I tried out. Regals and Johnsons aren't even in the same ballpark in my opinion. It's only noisy if you have bad slide technique, but any guitar would be. I love the plugged in sound. I run it through a Peavey Delta Blues amp, it sounds like an amplified resonator would. It roars when i run it through a Boss overdrive.

I have had no problems with the set-up, though I might go with slightly heavier string gauge set than the factory defaults. I think this guitar looks immaculate (or at least my personal one does). It has a nice ebony fingerboard w/ snowflake inlays that I really like. I think the headstock looks better than most Nationals and Dobros I have seen. i have had it for about 3 months and have not noticed any flaws in the maufacturing and the frets were finished nicely on mine.

I don't play live anymore, but I believe the guitar would hold up as well in a gigging situation as any other guitar out there. I would depend on it on a gig (or gigs) and I hope to get back into playing live in a little while, and I will use it in that situation. I would not probably take a backup for this guitar on a (hypothetical) gig as I would have a couple of other (electric and acoustic)guitars with me in the highly unlikely case this guitar got damaged.

I only emailed Goldtone once and that was about the wood used on the fretboard. (Their catalog says rosewood, but it's ebony). They replied within a day with an answer to my query. I haven't had the occasion to use the warranty and doubt that I will since the guitar seems built like a tank.

I being long of tooth have been playing about 42 years. I own a Gibson Heritage acoustic form the 60s, a Takemine acoustic/electric, and a recent Martin D17. As far as electrics I have a Les Paul, an American strat and tele, a Japanese tele and an Epiphone Dot. If this guitar was swiped I would as soon as I could affor it buy another one. It's a lot less expensive than a National and pretty close in sound and quality. I like the thinner body on it and find it more comfortable when playing the instrument while sitting. The fact that it is already set up for electric playing makes it a greta bargain. In fact when I plugged it into a Fender deluxe amp at the store where i bought it and tried my first slide up to the 12th fret, everyone's head in the store did a quick turn around and a lot of people went "wow"! i am sure if i didn't buy it it would have sold to someone else within a matter of hours or at most a couple of days.

2005 model; round neck metal slim line steel body, double stereo magnetic and transducer pick up, vintage 12 fret neck to body fit, beard cone designed specifically for metal bodies. came with a TKL hardshell case; fretboard is bound in maple; here's specs from the gold tone site

Finish: Chrome finish Back and Sides, Top Steel
Nut and Saddle: Bone Nut, Maple Saddle
Neck and Headstock Binding: Curly maple
Fingerboard: Rosewood
Fingerboard Inlay: Snowflake
Neck: Mahogany
Cone: USA made Beard Cone, Spun Aluminum
Tailpiece: Dobro Style
Tuning Machines: Sealed adjustable with chrome plated buttons
Body Depth: 2-1/4"
Neck Scale: 25" 1/4, 19 frets
Neck Width Under Nut: 1-3/4"
Total Length: 39"
Weight: 9 lbs

i had the guitar setup for fingerstyle, and i play everything on it, especially things you wouldn't expect to hear from a reso: i was after a distinct texture for playing, and i got it. acoustically the sound lacks presense (especially in the lower register, this is a slimline after all), but still can project well if you dig in a little - holds its own in an acoustic setting and good for practice. plugged in it's excellent, everything from jazz to blues to bluegrass to pop, etc. etc. pups are hot, no noise, you can blend them for a wide variety of sounds - good for no-names. use an offboard preamp - l.r.baggs mixpro is perfect to blend the 2 pups, either amped (i use a vox) or to the board. love it.

fit and finish excellent. this is a pro-level instrument, despite the relatively low price point. was disappointed in the "beard shop" setup - biscuit was misaligned, saddle cut too low on bass side, too high on treble. a mess. took it for setup by a local pro who swapped out the maple/ebony saddle for bone, dressed some frets, voila, perfect. everything else was fine. bought it to take advantage of the electronics and got what i wanted. points off for the lousy setup, it shouldn't have left the shop in that condition.

yes it'll withstand live playing, its a tank. tuners solid, holds tune very well. steel body marks with fingerprints easily, needs to be wiped down a lot. guitar is heavy (9 lbs), so playing it sitting down is best. very dependable guitar. yes i gig it without a backup -think i'm gonna lug 2 of these rocks around with me?

the guitar comes with a limited lifetime warranty, what ever that means. but its a sound instrument, i detect no manufacturing defects, anything else i'll take care of locally. dealer was friendly, beard shop answered my emails promptly although they didn't offer to correct the poor setup either - couple points off there. i wouldn't have shipped it back anyway, i'd rather invest in the instrument locally then pay shipping and handling charges. and i like having a pro do my setups to my likes, try it if you haven't, you'll be amazed at the difference it makes.

playing 40 years, its true, i'm old. own several nylon strings (cordoba, yamaha, takamine), a steel string s.s.stewart, a dano U2. if this guitar wandered off, i'd probably replace it with same - i'd also consider the national resolectric, but the national is about 2X the cost, and i don't believe its 2X the performance of this instrument. only thing i dislike about the instrument is the weight -marks easily too, so if you're anal about that kind of thing beware. everything else i love, i play it constantly and my other guitars are being neglected too often. hope these comments are helpful, i like this harmony-central resource and use it all the time when guitar shopping.