Views on tanglewood guitars

My nephew got a beautiful epiphone acoustic on Thomann for 400 recently - really surprised with the quality of both the build and finish and the sound of the instrument...

Da GOAT wrote: »

Last week I was in similiar boat as yourself with similiar money. At xmusic there was a couple martins c. 750-900 or so, Taylor 110 & 114 719-955e, Tanglewood c. 800e and a Craftine for 599e.

Martin, Taylor, Craftine played beautifully but martin was dullish. Craftine was on par with the Taylor but i felt taylors tad too bright so I ended up purchasing the craftine which I had never thought about when entering the shop. The tanglewood i wasnt a fan of, found playability abit stiffer than i like, design wise the tanglewood looked amazing but lacked playability.

anyway my 2c, dont go for brands.

Don't go on the sound too much. The last time I was in x music I noticed alot of the guitars in the high end room had old strings on them, some heavily tarnished. You can make any guitar sound dull if it has worn strings on it.

With that said, I did play a Tanglewood TW47E out on the main floor in X-Music some time ago. That guitar was better than half the guitars in the high end room I reckon. It played great, held tuning and intonated properly, straight off the rack. Wasn't keen on the garish gold tuners and the funky wood grain but the guitar was well built and had a good hard finish. I knew it was a cracker after about 10 seconds of playing it.

Of the guitars in the high end room, the Taylor 214CE was my favourite by a long way. Of all things, a guitar with laminated back/sides. I rate that guitar as better than my solidwood 712 from 1997 in almost every way except I prefer Grand Concert size/shape/weight. The only thing I didn't like about the 214 was the weight distribution when played over one leg.

Oh, it also cost a little over a third of what I paid for a 712 in 1997. So yeah, TW47E and 214CE are two giantkillers in my humble opinion. I want to stress however that pretty much every guitar in that store was better than what I learned on by a mile. I think the standard has been getting higher over the past 10 years or so.

I think its fair to say that Tanglewood is a well respected brand at this point. Alot of people have good things to say about them and I've personally found the Tanglewood guitars I've played to be quite impressive. As with all guitars, play it before you buy, but if a TW47 or TW45 is your first guitar then thats a helluva good way to start. The only problem is that if you don't get good quick, you can't blame your guitar like I could with the early 90s no name s**tboxes I used to play when I was a newbie.