Kavanagh Customs Gem

I have Gem 007, Stunning quilted mahaogay, brilliantly finished, All points made previously were spot on. This sounds and looks and plays as well as any guitar I have played.Yes nitro finish is soft but I'm sure it benefits the acoustics. I use a piece of thin foam over my belt buckle when playing it, that's how much I respect it.I'll tell you every fault now.There is a tiny spot of stain on a small bit of the white trim, there is a tiny area on the rebate, not the face, of one of the F holes, that has missed a drop of varnish.Tiny affairs when you consider that this is a true handmade guitar.

The sound is as described by the other reviewers, it is amazing, it is versatile, I feel that i'm the limiting factor with this guitars potential.

Beautifully set up, incredibly well packed. Neck is a delght, I don't play my other guitars much now.

Light, strongly made, and worth taking care off.

Learned, polite, and a pleasure to do business with. Although I think Mr Kavanagh would rather be making guitars than chatting.More like dealing with an artist than a guitar factory.

Played 40 years.Also have Gibson acoustic small J 1940's Gibson sg 1970's. The GEm is my favourite,I love its presence, the reaction it gets with colleagues. The fact that you can't buy one as it is a limited edition!
If it were stolen I would try to get a similar one by John.

This is a limited edition "Kavanagh Customs" masterpiece! The date on the back of the headstock shows it as being completed in August 2007, which means it took six months for them to build from the date of my order - not bad really!

It is a smallish semi acoustic quite reminisant of the old Japanese Yamahas with two chrome-covered "mini-buckers", a shorter Gibson scale, thin neck and stunning quilted mahogany top - I mean like REALLY stunning, like nothing you'll ever see anywhere else. I still enjoy just sitting and looking at it even now.

It's sprayed in a slightly brown0tinted nitrocellulose which is beautifully thin, although not a totally flawless finish - more on that later.

As far as guitars go, I've played quite a few and this is without a doubt the best sounding and most versatile guitar by far. I don't know if it's the pickups or the mahogany build, but it has this wonderful soulful tone to it - very rich and clear.

I play jazz so this is perfect for me, although I also play a bit of the older rock. This guitar distorts really cleanly without too much hum or feedback so no complaints here!

As I mentioned above, this guitar has the most stunning bookmatched quilted mahogany top. I've never seen anything like it and is guarenteed to get comments everywhere I take it. I think there are some photographs somewhere on their website of my guitar, take a look, you won't regret it.

I think Kavanagh is probably one of the only places left in the UK now that still shoots nitrocellulose as standard and boy do they know what they're doing with it! It's only applied very thinly so it sound brilliant. The only minor niggle I have is that it's not as hard-wearing as I would have liked, but that's the price you pay for nitro finish! It's also sunk a little bit on the back but it has been well used so that could be just as much environmental as anything else.

I've played this guitar almost every night since I've owned it and it's never skipped a beat. One snapped string, one accident where the lead got snagged, and a couple of drops and its still singing!

The hardware hasn't started to pit or peel and I believe it to be very high-quality stuff. The guitar stays in tune perfectly and sits well on the shoulders. It's incredibly light - far lighter than I had ever expected it to be - so it doesn't play havok on your back if you play for long times.

The finish itself isn't perfectly durable as mentioned above, but I would have bought a poly finished guitar if that's what I had wanted! It's just starting to wear nicely, it's certainly not a poor finish by any means..! As with any semi-acoustic, I think it's a little more fragile than the solid-body counterparts but it's still stood up very very well.

I've never felt that I needed a backup whilst gigging with it, although I always have sone available just in case.

One of the areas that Kavanagh shines through is their customer service - without a doubt the most friendly and helpful people in the industry - they take their time to make sure that things are explained and options gone over. They helped me every step of the way with my build and always responded quickly when I emailed them - even at 9 or 10 in the evening!

An amazing guitar from an amazing company at an amazing price. The most beautiful guitar you will ever lay eyes on. I've no regrets and would be back to them immediately if it were ever stolen or broken.

I believe that they have already sold all 100 of these Gems now but keep checking their website - there are bound to be a few that pop up later on and believe you me, they are worth every single penny.

I was lucky enough to be one of the people to get to try out the new Kavanagh Customs prototype model. For those of you who don't know, Kavanagh Customs is a custom guitar shop in the UK, and the Gem is their first attempt at a production line of guitars - all handbuilt in the UK, of course.

The 'Gem' is really a close copy of the old G*bson 355 with a good-sized chambered hollow body (plus two f-holes), two humbukcing pickups and a Tune-O-Matic bridge.

The finish on the one I got to grips with was a dark translucent green which, although I didn't really like to start with, really showed off the high-quality flamed maple top. The entire thing is finished in 100% pure nitro too so the entire thing just oozes quality to the touch.

The neck sported 21 vintage frets, pearl block inlays and a nice D-profile back which fitted my hand like a glove. Controls are as on the Les Pauls - two volume, two tone, one three-way switch which I think is a shame because a coil-tap would have been easy to include. That said, the pickups (all made by the same guys in the same workshop) sounded just divine, but that's for a different section of this review. The body, I believe, is made from white pine which seems like a slightly odd choice to make but it seems to pay off, the gutiar is really light-weight but doesn't lose any of the tone you would associate with low-weight guitars. Did I mention the entire body, neck and headstock were all triple-bound too?!

The sound is what you would expect from a high-quality workshop: incredible. The pickups are, I'm told, hand-wound for a very specific type of sound and I think they got it. There is a lot of poewr behind this guitar but not too much, it has just the right amount of mid-range and bass to really make it perfect for rhythm and lead. I played it through a Marshall valve stack and I didn't want to give it back again!

There didn't seem to be any undue noise coming from it, the body is shielded, not that it is really needed with humbuckers. You can't beat this sort of sound. It's obvious that a lot of time and effort has gone into this guitar, they've left nothing to second-best.

Of course, being the playing prototype, this guitar had passed through a fair few hands before I got my own try at it but it was still in absolutely perfect condition. The set-up was spot on, not a rattle from any of the frets and silky smooth to play.

The top was virtually perfectly-matched (anybody remember the 1970s Gibsons? Well, this beat the pants off them!) and the pickups seemed in a perfect position to me. The only tiny niggle I have is that the selector switch felt a little loose when used. I tightened up the nut myself and it was great again - I think this is more likely to be caused by the amount of use the gutiar had before I got to it so it's perfectly forgivable and hardly a surprise.

As I've already said, by the time I got hold of this gutiar, it had already passed through qiute a few different people's hands and played at numerous different gigs over the previous few weeks and it still looked absolutely perfect as-new. I would have no qualms about depending on this instrument backup-less - it's already been gigged a fair bit.

The hardware seems to be quite standard chrome/nickel-plated so nothing to really say there, the Gotoh tuners were, unsurprisingly, great at keeping the thing in tune.

The finish is pure nitrocellulose so it's meant to be very thin - that way it just lets more of the tonal properties of the wood out. That doesn't mean that it will wear away though I don't think. My only niggle is the selector switch which I already fixed quickly with a quick tighten.

The guys at Kavanagh Customs are true gentlemen of the highest order, I've dealt with them a few times and they have always been more than prompt in replying to my emails. It's a shame all companies aren't like this - they put the customer first and it really shows.

Although I didn't get to keep the guitar (it being a prototype and all), I've already put my name down for one when the line is released later this year and that's something I almost never do. It definately gives Gibson a run for their money. I'm told that the 'Gem' will be a very limited run of 100 guitars and I expect that they will all be gone in a flicker of an eye if they haven't already booked them all.

Remember: there's only 100 of them going to be made, so they are only ever going to increase in value with time (and they're really quite reasonably-priced to start with too), if you're serious about buying one, don't wait, you'll regret it and you'll never regret buying one.