New Altamira just arrived - I'm curious

Buco

Would somebody please explain what the issue is here?
Seriously?

The bridge gap, with one side butt up against the bass side mustache, has less than 1/8" on the treble side looking at the picture. I'd say about 3/32". You split that two ways and it's what you normally see on these things. I've never seen the bridge butt up against both mustache ends. You need to be able to move it some if you need to tweak the intonation. If the top moves during seasonal changes you don't want the bridge to be pushing the mustache ends. Most likely the thing shifted during transport. Losen up the strings and center it. Done.

dennis

I think it's OK to criticize luthiers or big companies (or me, no problem), but it has to be done objectively, and quite honestly, there is so much that the average person doesn't know about the industry, and here I am at least explaining as much as I can without going into political details.

I have nothing to gain from defending any company, I just try to keep things truthful and neutral.

I'll say it one more time, the difference between Altamira and Eastman, is that Eastman has an office in the USA, and as far as I understand, they have a team of real experts who take the instruments and make them presentable. It could be very likely that guitars coming out of their factory in China are in unplayable condition as well, so the USA office does the real important work.

Then dealers have to get the guitars from the USA office. From this point, the dealer has a responsibility to make sure that guitars remain in presentable condition. It's no different than a regular guitar store that carries expensive instruments. Some of their instruments don't get played for months or years, and their in-house tech doesn't do regular set-ups, well guess what? the guitars are not in presentable condition anymore.

Altamira on the other hand is making guitars and sending them to dealers straight out of the factory. They don't have a USA office (or a team of expert luthiers) that ship them out to dealers worldwide . Actually, I don't know the exact history or details, but that's what Dell Arte did (maybe still does), they got the Altamira instruments and did work on them, and changed the name to Manouche Latcho Drom or something like that. So basically the Manouche Latcho Drom would have been the equivalent of what Eastman are now doing. I've tried a few Latcho Drom, they were fine. Eastman is a huge company with a bigger budget for marketing so I think they will do quite well.

But then I don't know what happened but dealers started buying instruments directly from the factory that was making those guitars. So instead of buying Latcho Drom , dealers were getting the out of factory instruments. Not necessarily the end of the world, as some dealers will take the time to make their instruments presentable, but others will not.

I've seen this first hand, because the company that makes the Gitanes for Saga is a Taiwanese company. And by pure coincidence, the CEO happens to be my cousin's neighbour. He gave me a tour of his main office, and had me try some Gitanes that had just arrived from the factory. They were some of the shittiest instruments I ever played in my life, and I really like Gitanes. I remember him telling me that his company made Eastman guitars too (don't know if it's still the case) . I felt so bad because the CEO doesn't play music so he doesn't know jackshit about playability and I didn't know what to tell him. That must mean that when the instruments get shipped to the USA, there is some level of quality control. The Gitanes have been on the market the longest, and so I've tried many of them. Some stores regularly maintain their instruments, others don't. I was recently in a store where they had a Stephane Wrembel Gitane that was in piss poor condition, but I've tried other Gitanes in specialized stores that took care of their instruments, and guess what, they were great!

There I've explained some of the inner workings of the industry :-)

ChrisMartin

Buco wrote: »

Would somebody please explain what the issue is here?
Seriously?

The bridge gap, with one side butt up against the bass side mustache, has less than 1/8" on the treble side looking at the picture. I'd say about 3/32". You split that two ways and it's what you normally see on these things. I've never seen the bridge butt up against both mustache ends. You need to be able to move it some if you need to tweak the intonation. If the top moves during seasonal changes you don't want the bridge to be pushing the mustache ends. Most likely the thing shifted during transport. Losen up the strings and center it. Done.

Well if you read back I thought the 'issue' had been thoroughly described, but in case you missed it here goes one last time.
The original poster said he had bought the guitar including the set up and although he likes it and it plays ok he had a couple of valid questions.

First the action at the 12th fret went from less than 3mm to 4mm which he charitably put down to the atmospheric changes while in transit. Ok.

The deal with the moustache end having a near 2mm gap on the treble side may have been disguising a bigger problem. He says it is butted up against the one on the bass side and yes, following your suggestion he could slacken the strings and centre it, but chances are when played for a few minutes like that it will creep back to where it was; the tension of the strings trying to pull the shortest route will see to that.

I think the clue is that he mentions the bridge needed new notches cut to put the strings in the right place in relation to the neck alignment. If so, that could mean one of three choices for where the fault lies.

One is the bridge was never in the right place when the moustaches were glued on so the one on the bass side that it is butted up against is effectively pushing the bridge too far to the treble side. The correct fix would have been to remove and reglue the moustache ends with the bridge centred allowing a 0.5mm gap at either end.

Two, the tailpiece could have been fitted off centre therefore pulling the bridge across. The correct fix would be to realign the tailpiece.

Or three, least likely (but far worse) the neck is not glued true to the centreline of the body. The best fix for that would be to return it to the factory and give the customer a replacement.

acalvane92

Ok this image should clear up the "just center the bridge" tip. As you can see, the E strings are in a pretty good spot (but the fretboard dots are curiously not centered with the D and G strings). So centering the bridge between the moustache tips would cause more issues.

Also I should correct myself. The action did fit two of the 2.0mm picks, but the true thickness of them combined was about 3.78mm. I have been keeping the guitar in a case with a couple silica gel packs, so going from the ambient RH of ~62% to inside the case at ~45% RH overnight, the action is now about 3.3mm.

Lango-Django

There is a tremendous political network in the shadows that I myself have sometimes tried to talk about,

Aha... "Deep Gypsy State".

Buco

Thing is that's a lot of assumptions that are based on that one picture where the situation might have been caused by many other much less serious reasons.
If the original poster said he got the guitar, saw what he saw, centered the bridge and then after playing it a while, it moved towards the bass side, ok maybe then there is some underlying cause.
Creating all these theories after looking at that one picture... really? Especially because the original poster is not elaborating on anything else.
Similar thing happened to my guitar where I got the new bridge, notched the strings myself, local luthier saw my job and made new notches. The bridge stayed where it was, the new notches were just spaced out wider.
My guess would be that the same happened here.
But there is a lot we don't know here so everything is just that, guessing.

I'd be more annoyed with the action after the guitar was supposed to be setup. But you never know how the wood is going to react when it changes climate.
This one area, setup and playability out of box, is where I heard complaints about Altamira. And I agree, you shouldn't be getting a barely playable guitar after paying for even the basic model. The money that gets you the most basic model in GJ, can go a lot further for the guitar in any other genre. And I don't really understand, if a person can be trained to build the instrument, learning to do a basic setup shouldn't be any harder. But I don't know, there may be other factors that dictate those decisions. But other than this, I've never heard of complaints about these guitars.

Buco

Ok only after I wrote my post I saw the OP chimed in with another picture.
This guitar looks totally fine to me. The fretboard dots have nothing to do with the guitar geometry. Like I said, put the bridge in the center and enjoy the guitar. And hopefully the action comes down some more but 3.3 is already playable and easily corrected to lower action but better to wait at least a week before doing anything.

t-bird

With the addition of the fourth picture, I now think you need more space between the bridge and mustache pieces! It seems the camera angles are confusing the issue.

An easy fix would be to remove the bridge and file down the bass end just a bit (To be clear - shorten the length not height). This will not only make it a more "even" aesthetic," it also gives you some wiggle room for intonation.

In certain cases, I have found that having the bridge perpendicular to the neck (parallel with the frets) is not ideal for intonation. Sometimes, rotating the bridge a couple degrees can help dial it in. This is not possible if tight mustache pieces are restricting the rotation.

AndrewUlle

With that last photo, I'd agree that the moustache tips need moving. Pop them both off (there was a recent thread with suggestions on how to); set the bridge for proper intonation, then reattach the tips. I'm not sure I'd want to ship it across the country & back for that kind of adjustment. It's certainly not my place to comment on QC at Djangobooks - there may be a perfectly good reason for the apparent misalignment.

Bones

I can't imagine building a guitar in Asia and shipping it all the way to the US and having the setup stay put although that really only applies to 'action'. That would not explain why the moustache pieces are in the wrong spot. Side to side 'centering' of the strings on the neck is not what I call 'setup'. That's just basic assembly.