This
Washburn J-4 archtop has done me well for composing and Christmas tunes for the past three or four years. This guitar was sold to me as a NAMM-show demo and it is eye candy all day.
You're saying, "Korean, plywood, how good can it be?" The answer is: Pretty sweet. Although this misses some of the nuance of your 1930 Gibson L-4 it gets surprisingly close to the neighborhood. Round-hole archtops tend to have more inherent sustain and a rounder tone than f-hole models -- kinds splitting the middle of the typical, nasal "jazz box" and the typical flat-top sound. This instrument is no exception. It actually provides a pleasant, useful acoustic sound -- much more so than plywood archtop f-hole guitars, which for my buck are essentially useless unplugged whether Gibson or Gypsum.
The pickup is your basic Korean OEM. It works fine. IMR it's about 8k ohms.
Best of all, it's $275 in the Warwick RockBag case (which is a pretty nice bag, too). I'll pay USPS to the Lower 48.
Picture that. You can look your sweety in the eye and say, 'Hon, I know it looks expensive but it was less than $300 bucks.'
Let me know pdq please.
