Opinion of Saga(China) and de puges guitars (France)

Alan High

Please let me know what you think of your guitar. I have heard so much about Saga -are they really that good ?
Any info. on Castellucia and Jean-louis-de puga makes ?

What guitar is best 'petite bouche ' or 'grande' ?(Soundhole)
cheers all,

Alan.

just the bassplayer

I purchased a Gitane D-500 D-hole guitar over a year ago. I've owned many fine guitars and have played many more of excellent construction. The D-500 is an excellent value. The construction is very good, the neck is comfortable,and a nice rounded D shape.

I had the fretboard levelled, and the frets dressed, when I purchased it. The strings should be replaced with a good gypsy type, such as Savarez Argentine, light gauge, for authentic tone and more satisfction. From the various forum postings I learned that the bridge is easily replaced with a traditional Gypsy type, such as a Dupont. After some experimentation, I got the bridge to a good height which gave the instrument a nice punch and a thicker tone. I also fitted some black glazed kid-skin leather under the tailpiece in the traditional way, this cut out strange sympathetic over-tones that would arise from time to time- especially after putting on a fresh set of strings.

Mine came with a Golden Gate plastic shelled case which is good enough protectetion, and is certainly better than Django's technique of using newspaper!

While learning the Gypsy Picking technique and the new chord structures, I've found the instrument to be very satisfactory. It has wonderful tone and a great deal of volume, which seems to surround the player, more so than other styles of instruments.
For the money, it's a fine guitar.

djadam

Alan High wrote:

Please let me know what you think of your guitar. I have heard so much about Saga -are they really that good ?
Any info. on Castellucia and Jean-louis-de puga makes ?

What guitar is best 'petite bouche ' or 'grande' ?(Soundhole)
cheers all,

Alan.

I loves me my DG-250M. When I first got it, I wasn't too impressed - spoiled by my nice acoustics, but after re-stringing it with the Savarez strings and adjusting the neck tension to make it more flat, it started singing. Maybe not as sweet a tone as some of the more expensive gypsy instruments, but it really projects and sounds terrific, especially considering the price. It'd be hard to find a better value in a guitar. Someday I'll probably want a gorgeous expensive gypsy instrument, but I love this one way too much to considering a mere placeholder!

drolling

Can't comment on the other makes you mention, but I'm happy with my Gitanes. The one that sees the most use is a Jorgenson signature model oval hole (DG-300). Most expensive of all the Gitanes, it's got a thicker neck profile than the other long scale models (many find the 250 and 255's necks to be too skinny) and came with better fretwork than the others I've owned.

Aria has just come out with a D hole & an oval hole selmer style guitar that's even cheaper than the Gitanes. I haven't seen any for sale in north america yet, but they would appear to be retailing for around $300 US.

John Jorgenson is working with Saga (Gitane) to produce some new additions to the line and I'm hoping that a long scale 14 fret D hole is in the works. I love the sound of my D-500 (the model described by justthebassplayer), but have come to prefer the feel of the 27" scale.

Of course, I'd love to own a fine hand crafted selmac someday, but for a beginner like me, the Gitanes are close enough.

RICK-D15

I love my DG-250M.

It had a really bad buzz when I first got it due to the 2nd fret being slightly raised, but some filing took care of that. There were also a few burrs on the tuners that needed to be filed. I was also amazed at the difference a custom bridge made in both sound and intonation. If you get one, get rid of that Saga bridge.

Powerfibers

I just took receipt of a brand new D-255 model. I am very impressed at how good an instrument this was for $620 shipped with a Golden Gate case. I do not know if they have improved the guitars with each batch, but I am seeing very little to complain about. I only wish they would have shipped it with proper strings instead of bronze acoustic strings. I am going to hold off on throwing the Saga bridge aside for now. It seems rather good.
This is a great guitar for the money, possibly my best deal in new guitars yet, although my $400 Ibanez Artcore is a fine jazz box for the dough too.

I enjoy playing the Gitane much more than my $2K PRS singlecut (which may soon go bye bye to get me a hand built Selmac guitar.) This stuff gets addictive doesn't it? You always want more.

Jack

Hi Bob,

I think you've already heard this on the Yahoo group, but I figured I'd mention it here as well-if you're around the weekend of Nov. 11th, think about coming down for Dennis' workshop in Western Massachusetts. Addictive doesn't start to cover it...if interested, you'll find all the information here:
http://www.acousticguitarnetwork.org/au ... /index.htm
Hope to meet you there, i.e., here!

Best,
Jack.