Altamira M10/30 or Gitane Lulo Reinhardt?

Jim Kaznosky

There aren't enough well stocked guitar shops that one can walk into to try out what works. To add, even if there were, the projection of that guitar is going to vary from a simple in-store demo to a jam to a gig. It's a niche genre with niche offerings and unfortunately the baseline price point can be restrictive for the entry level player.

That being said, I've been in a lesson with a well known player who made my worst guitar that I had to use while another was getting a tune up sound pretty ridiculous. It's kind of a tough position to be in.

That being said, at least there are attempts by certain companies at offering better made guitars worthy of gigging and jams that are being offered. We should celebrate that.

dennis

Definitely try a guitar before buying it when possible, but for me personally, under a certain price range (1000$ US) , I’m almost OK with blindly buying a factory made instrument. Every guitar is different, I have tried so many Gitanes, and some sounded better than others for sure, but none sounded like “junk”. I think you also have to look at it from the perspective that until fairly recently, guitars like these weren’t as easily accessible as they are today. Gypsies often played on no name brand folk guitars , classical guitars, archtops that were worth nothing. Paulus Schafer recorded his first album on a really cheap archtop guitar.

I have the Altamira Model M which I really like, but I would equally be happy with a Gitane or an Eastman. But since I was only getting this guitar for my homestay students, I got the one that was the least expensive and still had the “typical” sound.

Eastman is a few hundred dollars more, and since I have a good guitar, I don’t need to spend extra on it. The Saga Cigano is slightly less expensive than the Model M, but the neck is too thin for my tastes and the sound not as good , in my opinion. So I didn’t mind spending a tiny bit extra for something more “authentic”. Then the model above the Saga Cigano is the D250 or D255, both great instruments with great resale value. They sound fine. In fact Paulus also recorded some albums on one of bthese guitars if I’m not mistaken. But the neck still is a bit thin for my tastes (compared to old Gypsy guitars), and the Altamira still has a more typical Gypsy Jazz guitar sound.

And as always, assuming that there is no construction flaw, then setup makes the biggest difference in how we judge an instrument. As we’ve seen elsewhere, different climates can affect the setup of an instrument. A guy in Malaysia owns a guitar thaat I owned 14 years ago, and the Malaysian climate completely destroyed the guitar and made it sound and feel practically worthless :-( . I had the opportunity to try it when I played in Kuala Lumpur this past year

Guitars can be complicated

fourowls

dennis wrote: »

fourowls wrote: »

Excuse if I come across like one of those gear snobs (I am not!) but Angelo Debarre (who is one of my GJ heroes!) liked the asian made Altamira? Wow??

I think I need to be clear about what I wrote. He didn't say WOW I love this guitar, he just said something along the lines of "you know for the price, this is quite alright". When I mentioned that company was based in Hong Kong and we could maybe play their guitars there so we don't have to bring ours, he said it wasn't a bad idea.

Obviously, my luthier made guitar blows the guitar out of the water. There's no comparison, but I stand by what I said, for its price, as long as it's well setup, it's hard to beat.

Hi Dennis
LOL..thanks for the clarification, and you would think as a doctoral student I would be more careful about reading into things!! Thanks for taking time to respond, and I am sure your lovely AJL would be hard to beat! I have always wondered what Angelo thinks of when looking at a guitar...and glad to hear he can still see a good bargain!
Regards
Andrew H