Product: Johnson JD-30-CCE
Price Paid: 249 (Euro)
Submitted
05/31/2003
at
06:27am
by
Norbert Block
Email: webmaster at paleochora-kreta<dot>de
Features
:
7
Made in China, 20 frets, laminated spruce top,laminated mahogany sides and back, glossy finish, Dreadnought with cut, fat mahogany neck, medium frets, strange but working tuners, B-Band A-3 transducer. Came with a cable, a battery and a key to adjust the neck.
Sound
:
7
This guitar is a perfect piece of imperfection. The binding doesn`t fit in several places. I don't know what kind of wood they used for the bracing. The soundboard-color is dark on one half and light on the other one. Over all this guitar is looking strange but good (I love strange things). With the strings wound up by the factory it sounded terrible. I put on some Thomastic Plectrum light ones. But the B and high E were too loud. So I put on the B and high E in extra light. Now with this combination the guitar sounds ok, the B-Band is ok anyway. Acoustically it's not so loud, but balanced now, which suits my voice very well. I'm no shouter.
Action, Fit, & Finish
:
7
Mostly everything is said above. The action was terrible out of the box. Even my knees got hurt when trying to play this piece of laminated wood. I did some work on the saddle and the neck and now it's even more fun to play this guitar than my Gibson J 100 extra. I Think I will do some woodwork on the bracing too, just to get the bass and the mids more offensive.
Finish is proper, except the Fishbone-Binding, but I like these small flaws, nobody's perfect, good work for an 8 year old guitar-builder in China. Even my Gibson had them, but I lost my lifetime warranty because I had to do the same jobs on it. Anyway the Gibson sounds a 10, but costed a lot more.
Reliability/Durability
:
9
This guitar should be your choice for live gigs. Amplified it sounds really ok and I love the fat, but fast neck. This thing is really heavy, so I think it will withstand a lot of bounces. But there will be a test this year playing on Crete. 42 Centigrades and a humidity over 80 percent, thats where my Stanford OM 5 Pro gave up last year. I will tell you about the behaving of the Johnson later.
Customer Support
:
No Opinion
Didn't trie it because I love to work on wood, even when it's laminated.
Overall Rating
:
8
I play guitar for over 35 years now. When I was young I dreamt of a Gibson for lots of years until I could afford one. I'm very used to Stanfords as well, because they sound very similar to Martins but have a wider neck. But I love my Gibson and the Johnson too. With all it's flaws, it's a very nice instrument, but maybe you have to be familiar with working on wood.
