TAKAMINE G SERIES BLUEGRASS ACOUSTIC

Based at the Takamine Moun­tain near Sakashita, Japan, Takamine have been pro­duc­ing gui­tars for over 40 years. Start­ing as a small fam­ily busi­ness they refined their craft and designs even­tu­ally expand­ing to over­seas trad­ing in 1975. With their work on the ‘flat back’ acoustic/electric in the late 70’s/early 80’s the Takamine name was soon mak­ing its way into the hands of many high pro­file play­ers. Together with their clas­si­cal ‘Hirade’ model (named after Mass Hirade, one of the dri­ving forces behind Takamine’s design and build qual­ity) these gui­tars pro­pelled them to being one of the most respected mak­ers in the world today.

G UNIT

The Takamine ‘G’ series is designed to offer ’ impres­sive per­for­mance at a very afford­able price and fea­tures the largest range of shapes, mod­els, woods and colours of all their lines. With a spruce top, mahogany back and sides and rose­wood fin­ger­board, the EG340SC con­jures up my exact image of a tra­di­tional dread­naught styled gui­tar. The lighter coloured solid spruce top is fin­ished nicely with a sub­tle black and white bind­ing and black pick guard. The gold machine heads match the logo colour for a classy, refined look.

Abalone is the mate­r­ial of choice for the rosette and dot inlays and it’s clear the Takamine guys take pride in their work with no notice­able marks or blem­ishes. For those look­ing to plug the EG340SC comes stan­dard with the Takamine TP4T onboard pre­amp fea­tur­ing a 3 band graphic eq and inbuilt tuner.

DREADNOUGHT HOLIDAY

Orig­i­nat­ing from the early Mar­tin body designs the dread­naught has become a sta­ple of gui­tar mak­ers the world over. This larger body sized Takamine exam­ple res­onated nicely with the com­bi­na­tion of spruce and mahogany mak­ing for a clear, even tone with plenty of vol­ume and pro­jec­tion. Into­na­tion and action were good and there wasn’t a sharp over­hang­ing fret in sight — good work! The neck was solid but not too chunky and the cut­away was smooth for those want­ing to reach the upper frets.

Ampli­fied the TP4T pre­amp sys­tem does a good job of repli­cat­ing the guitar’s fun­da­men­tal tone with quite a bit of play in the 3 band eq. The decent sized vol­ume con­trol pot as opposed to a slider func­tion was a refresh­ing change , mak­ing adjust­ments on a dark stage much eas­ier. Both strummed and picked the gui­tar seemed to respond nicely with­out any unwanted noise or overtones.

PRICE CHECK

Like so many man­u­fac­tur­ers today Takamine work on offer­ing dif­fer­ent mod­els at var­i­ous price points, thus expos­ing them to a larger mar­ket rather than lim­it­ing them­selves to a cer­tain price bracket. Often com­pa­nies with these philoso­phies get crit­i­cised for spread­ing them­selves too thin and not car­ing too much about their lesser priced lines. Ques­tion marks over qual­ity con­trol and mate­ri­als used are raised, espe­cially when pro­duc­tion is out­sourced. The EG2340SC shows noth­ing that rein­forces these doubts. It’s an all round good look­ing, under­stated axe with great fea­tures for an afford­able price!

By Nick Brown

Price: $799
Dis­trib­u­tor: Pro Music Australia