Takamine TAN46C

This is a 2009 Japanese made Takamine using a nex cutaway design. It has a 20 fret mahogany neck, a solid spruce top bookmatched in two pieces with a solid rosewood back and rosewood sides. It has a natural gloss finish, tortoise shell effect scratch plate and abalone rosette. It contains a CPT-2 Cool tube pre-amp with piezo-pick-ups mounted in the bridge, which is of the thread through design and is bonded to the top. The CPT-2 contains a tube, which can be mixed into the pre-amp along with solid state amplification depending on how much warmth is required. It has a three band graphic equaliser, with a nob to shift the frequency the mid point operates over. There is a facility to add additional pick-ups. The CPT-2 also has an onboard tuner and is powered by four AA batteries.

The Takamine comes with Takamine branded tuners in pearloid and gold, the action is fairly low out of the box and the frets are thin. The neck is short scale. The guitar came in a leather effect (I assume effect) brown coloured case and is a snug fit.

I bought this guitar to play in the worship band at church and in small meetings in houses. Contempory praise music is sort of a folk rock sound. In the house situation I play it acoustically and in church I put it through a solid state Marshall and then DI through the headphone socket through the church PA. I use either no effects apart from a bit of amp reverb or some chorus. Amplified the guitar gives a lush articulate and bright sound that sits nicely above the bass guitar and complements the piano well. Straight away people remarked on how nice it sounded.

When I first got the guitar I finger picked some tunes and my wife who was upstairs commented she thought it was the radio and asked me to play some more. Normally she is asking me to stop playing but she loves the sound, for this reason more than any it is getting a high score.

The guitar has a nice low action. I have an old Ovation which is painful to play past the fifth fret but I have managed quite well with this playing completely bar chorded songs (we have a trumpet player so everything is in Bb or Eb), whereas on the Ovation it just wasn't possible. I should also mention that the body shape means that the guitar is very comfortable to play.

There are a couple of small knots on the spruce top and the lines on the binding don't quite match up in the middle, otherwise it is imaculate. It is an instrument that exudes quality, but I am knocking a point off for the binding flaw.

I have played it live and I can't imagine that it will let me down, although battery life is 24 hours, so I have switched to rechargeables and will recharge between gigs. The jack is tight and well positioned through the strap button. The strap buttons are solid and heavy duty in appearance.

I don't expect the gloss finish to wear off and it should be robust. I chhose this model because it has a scratch plate and a gloss finsih as I wasn't sure I wouldn't trash the EAN series satin finish. The guitar holds its tuning well but I have never really owned a guitar that doesn't if you tie the strings right.

I have already played this without a back-up anyway, but it does not give me any dependability concerns. Time will tell on the reliability front because I wonder how long the valve will last.

It has a years warranty, all you ever get in the UK. Never contacted takamine.

I have been playing for 25 years now, although I use this guitar for church praise music. I mainly play electric blues on a Les Paul or a Dot. I also have an explorer and a flying Vee for heavy rock and an old Ovation I have had for 20 years.

Looking at the price breakdown of Takamines I realised you get a free hard case on the higher end models that you don't get on the G series so when you factor this the difference in price is narrowed.

I looked at Taylors, Martins, Gibsons etc but they were just out of my price range and probably given what I have to play the guitar through are not going to make enough difference for the money. I did consider a Yamaha too but plumped for the Takamine in the end.

If it were stolen I would like another one it has put me back in love with acoustic guitars.