C
A poor choice on my part.
Against my better judgement, I decided to keep this guitar, assuming that I would be able to improve it with a decent set up. I rarely fail but on this occasion I don’t have the skill to perform a miracle. When the guitar arrived the battery carrier kept rejecting the PP3 battery supplied. I noticed the battery was a bit on the fat side so I fitted a good quality replacement. No joy, it would close properly but wouldn’t stay locked in place. I applied a little heat to the carrier locking mechanism to improve the locking tab engagement. Success. The PP3 and holder stay in place and are electrically engaged. The battery carrier is of poor quality in my opinion. I’ve never had to resort to that kind of repair work before. The on board mixer is quite effective so it is possible to maximise the overall sound of the amplified instrument, accepting that this is not an expensive instrument so the outcome is relative to its cost. Unfortunately there’s no means of balancing the output of each string so the E A and D strings tend to dominate. The action set up was appalling on delivery but I was able to improve this using the truss rod adjustment as this was without any tension applied to it. Sadly the action is still a little high but I’m loathe to make any reduction to the bridge insert as there isn’t much room for manoeuvre here. In my view, the last problem is the worst one and that is how bad the intonation is, particularly after the twelfth fret. With the existing fixed bridge there is no obvious way of correcting this and I don’t think the quality of the instrument warrants asking a skilled luthier to address this issue. Personal choice of course, you may feel differently. Intonation of a classical guitar is a much discussed subject with many varied opinions of how best to achieve it. My thoughts are that a change of strings could be all that is required as only the second string is really out of tune. Which make of strings to choose though? If I find a brand of strings that sorts out the intonation I will, of course, pass that on.
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