Takamine GX11ME NS (Taka-mini)

Thanks arrived today. An amazing guitar. Get one better than The Martin mini.

Sound a bit too mellow for my liking from the laminated all-mahogany body. Solid and well built small bodied guitar which is just loud enough for home use. May have to experiment with string gauges to up the volume level. Action lowered a little to ease playing. Other than that good out of the box.

These days I tend to play more ukulele than guitar and I find that now when I pick up an acoustic guitar its like putting a double bass under your arm. Therefore I've been looking for a smaller guitar so the contrast won't be too great but many of the cheaper parlour guitars that I've tried just sound too puny and 'thin' and to me travel guitars look 'wrong'. I'd never heard of the Chinese-made Takamine GX11 ME-NS when I came across it in a music shop but I loved the look of it's satin-finished mahogany body, complete with black binding and black pick guard. And when I picked it up and played it it sounded very good - surprisingly loud with the mahogany giving a characteristic 'dark' and 'woody' tone. The guitar comes with Takamine's TP-4T preamp (complete with bass, middle and treble sliders, tuner and 'low battery indicator') and also sounds excellent when plugged in, typical of all Takamine electro acoustics. The back, sides and top are all laminated mahogany and while a solid top would have been nice the sound is still very good and the laminated wood obviously keeps the cost down when comparing it to say the similar but much more expensive Taylor Mini Mahogany. The neck is a 3-piece mahogany neck (1.65" at the nut) with black binding (with fret markers) and a rosewood fingerboard and the frets are perfectly finished and it is lovely to play. It's got a short scale neck of 221/2" (as compared to my full-size acoustic's 241/2") but it doesn't fell small to play, just comfortable and accessible. The bridge is rosewood and the nut and saddle look to be plastic rather than bone. The guitar comes with a serviceable padded black nylon Takamine gig bag complete with large pocket for leads etc. I was willing to pay much more than this modest price for the right guitar but I am very happy with this guitar which does everything that I want and I still think that it looks great (with a similar understated look to the Martin 15M series at a fraction of the price) and also sounds great both acoustically and plugged in. Four and a half stars.