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When great companies go bad!!!!!!
I was going to post this under the cheap guitar thread, but it didn't really seem apropos.
If you are buying a inexpensive guitar, the one thing I would advise you to avoid at all costs, no matter how cheap they are, is the Martin X series guitars (the DCXME and such), the ones with the Formica tops. They are coming back to bit the factory and the people who have bought them, big time. The tops collapse with some regularity, leading to severely low action which, in some cases, is impossible to fix. The worst part is, the factory are saying, "The top is within spec" (that is a direct quote from a factory repair quote on a customers guitar recently) on these guitars.
In the last two weeks I have seen at least a half a dozen with severely sunken tops, and we have had probably twenty in the shop this winter. It looks like a very severe case of under humidification, except that they are (supposedly) not susceptible to humidity issues. We have been theorizing that the braces, which are not really adequate to do the job in the first place, are drying out, causing the problem. The have an X brace, and a traverse brace under the fingerboard area. They also have a few graphite patches on the inside of the top. It is not enough structure in the best of situations. Even when they are right, they sound like they have been strung up with rubber bands, as the top flexes too much.
I love Martin guitars, and I think that the 15 style guitars are the best value out there in the guitar market right now, but the X series guitars are a nightmare, and Chris and the rest of the factory are (I think) starting to realize it. There is no way we should be having the number of repair issues we are having on guitars which are less than 5 years old. They have (I think) gone too far in their attempt to be competitive with Taylor.
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"Cowards can never be moral."
M.K. Gandhi
I was going to post this under the cheap guitar thread, but it didn't really seem apropos.
If you are buying a inexpensive guitar, the one thing I would advise you to avoid at all costs, no matter how cheap they are, is the Martin X series guitars (the DCXME and such), the ones with the Formica tops. They are coming back to bit the factory and the people who have bought them, big time. The tops collapse with some regularity, leading to severely low action which, in some cases, is impossible to fix. The worst part is, the factory are saying, "The top is within spec" (that is a direct quote from a factory repair quote on a customers guitar recently) on these guitars.
In the last two weeks I have seen at least a half a dozen with severely sunken tops, and we have had probably twenty in the shop this winter. It looks like a very severe case of under humidification, except that they are (supposedly) not susceptible to humidity issues. We have been theorizing that the braces, which are not really adequate to do the job in the first place, are drying out, causing the problem. The have an X brace, and a traverse brace under the fingerboard area. They also have a few graphite patches on the inside of the top. It is not enough structure in the best of situations. Even when they are right, they sound like they have been strung up with rubber bands, as the top flexes too much.
I love Martin guitars, and I think that the 15 style guitars are the best value out there in the guitar market right now, but the X series guitars are a nightmare, and Chris and the rest of the factory are (I think) starting to realize it. There is no way we should be having the number of repair issues we are having on guitars which are less than 5 years old. They have (I think) gone too far in their attempt to be competitive with Taylor.
Light
"Cowards can never be moral."
M.K. Gandhi
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