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thanks mate
The variations between each guitar from a factory is going to be more than the variation from any back and side tonewood. In my opinion. They are going to be cutting all the tops to exactly the same thickness and each piece of spruce may be radically different* from the previous so you are going to get significant differences between the same model of guitar.
Your best bet it to get your hands on some guitars and find one you like. Factory guitars are mostly made to arrive safely, sound decent and not crack. I don't really think the back and side material is going to be nearly as much a factor as just how good that individual guitar sounds.
*Interestingly, I've noticed that some tops I have, one side of the book match will be very noticeably different from the other in stiffness. I have one set where one half is just like jelly and the other half is rock solid. These are just a saw cuts width apart from each other. So you can imagine the variation on one side of the tree to the other or from different trees.
But in a factory as far as I know they are not going to be accounting for any variation in stiffness, they are likely building something that's stable for the least stiff boards, which means you will have a significant amount of overly stiff guitars.
To echo what Paul, said, I liked the sound of maple on the that earlier comparison video but it's it's 50/50 whether I'll hear the same thing on any other random M model I might play. And to me, the overall feel of the instrument comes even before the tone.
And I might be in the minority, but I have very rarely been able to pick an instrument out of a blind test based on wood alone. And I would venture a guess that while many of us have preferences, I'm willing to bet many, if not most of those preferences would fall apart in a blind test. To echo what Buco said, if the guitar feels great to you and is from a good builder or shop, how YOU feel when YOU play it are tantamount to anything else IMO.
I'm happy to be corrected, but I don't think that Altamira is necessarily building the guitars any different (minus solid vs laminate) between their models. I'd get the M01, make sure it's setup well, and go from there. Great guitars, and IMO until you're ready to spend another grand at least, you're not going to do better.
thanks for the comments guys i appreciate you
The Altamira guitars are not great, none of them is. My 2 cents would be if you go for an Asian guitar get one from Japan.
Opinion noted, but not defended or explained. Thus, not particularly helpful for the inexperienced.
Mazda's aren't great. Buy American...
Altamiras are fine. I had a Gitane or something like that first. Super loud but really bright. Then I had an Altamira. It was totally ok. It was not an amazing instrument. Dullish. But I think it compared favorably with other guitars in the same price range.
After that I started making my own guitars and they have been pretty decent and getting better. I think the difference even with my first instruments was I was building stuff where my main concern wasn't shipping it from overseas. There's a baseline tone suck for making a guitar that starts its life travelling from a super humid place to a dry place. It has to be at least a bit overbuilt.
So any of these equivalent guitars are going to lack some amount of brilliance I think but the Altamira seems to be one of the better of them.
One thing I really didn't like about it is that they build them like a Spanish classical, without a neck block. That makes it impossible to do a neck reset.
Can you help me out with these 2? Those are both altamira m's 1 from reverb one from the original site but the one on reverb seems to have different neck color,
1)
2)https://altamiraguitars.com/products/m?srsltid=AfmBOoqEPMkWZdHz2ZPIdKDuBbeCetLFgyfivsNdPCgi8uPFe27THjOz what is it with that?
Probably just a natural color variation of the wood species used. I personally wouldn't worry about it. Get the one that looks best to you/best deal!