Product: Lyle C-630
Price Paid: N/A
Submitted
06/30/2002
at
12:27pm
by
Paul Shipley
Features
:
5
My Mom bought this Japanese made classical guitar in 1970 (laminate cedar top, jumbo frets, 12 frets clear of the body, 15ish total), played it about three years, then left it in the attic, I rediscovered it last year. Generic (squeaky) tuners. Standard width neck.
Sound
:
8
The sound of this thing is incredible for a laminate guitar. Deep rich bass response, solid treble and midrange. I have medium tension Savarez strings on it and it sounds better than anything I've played that was worth less than a grand. Unfortunately, due to the high action down the fretboard (see next section) it's intonation is not so great, and it is hard to play fast as you move down the frets.
Action, Fit, & Finish
:
3
Note that all of the following are probably due to the guitar spending nearly 30 years in an attic, going through a lot of thermal cycles...
The neck was separating from the body, folding the guitar in half. I had the neck reattached (hoping to lower the action some in the process (which it did, but not enough).
Fretwires were fairly uneven, but playable. Tuners squeak like mad (not the metal bits, but the part that goes in the wood) but work just fine.
The bridge is starting to pull off. It's worth getting it reglued though. I'm giving this a fairly low rating, but it was probably fine 30 years ago.
Reliability/Durability
:
7
So far it's been bulletproof, and it gets banged up a fair amount (I just keep it in a gigbag). I use it as my camping/paddling/beach guitar and it sees some rough use. It had a number of problems when I found it (see above) but they aren't hard fixes (except the intonation (no, I can't file down the saddle any further)). I think when the last few problems are taken care of this will be a trouble free guitar.
Customer Support
:
No Opinion
heh, bet they haven't made a Lyle in at least 25 years...
Overall Rating
:
7
I found this guitar up in Mom's attic and figured it'd make a great take to the beach, camp, canoe, whatever guitar. I didn't expect it to sound nearly as good as it does. The maintenance problems are not that big a deal, and for fingerstyling while staring at the fire or making people suffer through me singing it's great. I even find myself playing it at home (other guitar is a Tacoma Roadking) when I want the softer sound of a classical or feel like playing classical music.
