I've just been looking at a 2017 used E6om in mint condition which I quite like (God it would be cheaper for me to pay for a good therapist!). The main issue for me is the fact that it has been re-fretted by a luthier with stainless steel Jescars, and they are set slightly higher than the original frets. What are the implications of this for me? The seller says 'I just prefer slightly higher frets as it makes the acoustic play a bit more like my electrics. I find I needs less fretting pressure to cleanly fret chords with the higher frets. They're not huge by any means. The new frets are the same stainless steel frets that are fitted standard on my Suhr electric and very similar size to a Fender Strat's Dunlop 6105 frets. The standard Eastman frets were pretty small and low.' Travel distance effectively precludes my benefitting from a hands-on. Should I be wary of buying this guitar? What is the likely impact on sound/playability of these frets? I know next to nothing about fret materials/fittings. 

Hi,

I currently own an Ibanez AS93, but am contemplating to upgrade to an Eastman semihollow :-)

I have been researching for some time and I am currently leaning towards the T186MX. I was actually close to pulling the trigger until I saw that my local Eastman dealer had increased the prices on his homepage - apparently only because of the new 2018 models. As a result the T186MX (and other T18x guitars) has now had a price increase of roughly 20 % from EUR 1.970 to EUR 2.370 (or in USD, 2,217 to 2,670). That seems like a pretty steep increase and I am curious if it is a global thing or just here in Denmark...

Thanks for you input.

SOLD  PENDING  RECEIPT  OF  PAYMENT
MINT New Condition Eastman AJ816CE Archback Cutaway, Medium Jumbo 16" Size of a Dreadnaught, Fishman Electronics, Volume & Tone Control Knobs Inside Sound Hole, Maple Body, Spruce Top, Wonderful Voice, Great Projection. Discontinued 16" Jumbo. Xlent HS Case. A stunning beautiful guitar every feature and component. Eastman's most expensive flattop guitar in 2012. MSRP: $2,075 in 2012 Eastman Catalog at this link: https://ecitydoc.com/download/2012-catalog-5_pdf
PRICE LOWERED ON 12/8/18 TO $1025 FIRM SHIPPED
MAY TRADE FOR AN EASTMAN HOLLOW BODY ELECTRIC or "WILL TRADE" for an Eastman AC522.

Prices Firm, Shipped. Paypal Add $20 or Add $0 for Personal Check or Cashier's Check
Eastman AJ816CE Price $1150

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I'm an Eastman dealer and occasionally order left handed guitars because being a lefty myself I understand the hassle of finding lefty instruments. I got in a T486L fully intending to sell it but when I picked it up I was intrigued, when I plugged it in I was sold. 

I own plenty of other guitars but I feel such a bond with this guitar. The feel, the tone and the looks blow me away and fits right into my style. I always longed for a 335 but with the T486 I feel my longing is over. It's a shame that some people are so bias  towards big brands and ignore the others because I'll put this toe to toe with any of them.

(11-13-2018, 05:52 AM)Thedman Wrote:  

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Being imbued with a powerful sense of curiosity (and Knowing that lots of you are closet fiddlers - I'm not) I contacted Eastman to enquire if they produce a violin using torrified tone woods, which might reproduce something of the revered sounds of 18th century instruments (I know the varnishes of the period are held to be the major factor here). They don't but were non-committal about possible future developments  'We do not currently carry a violin with a torrified top, but are experimenting with different processes'.
Had I been born rich instead of beautiful, I would hot foot it to a top notch luthier and employ his skills to design and build a classical guitar with torrified top and violin varnish finish. It mightn't be a successful experiment in terms of the resulting instrument but would be worth it anyway. What an absolutely fascinating project that would be and I would learn so much!

I believe that hydration is important.  My beliefs have been formed reading what many long time, experienced luthiers have to say.  Builders take constant moisture content readings of their wood all along the way, many say that about 47% is optimum during the building process.

Depending on where you live and seasonal climate factors should help decide things.  If you live in Arizona vs where I live (Piedmont of the Smokies)... dry vs humid climate is normal.  Piedmont has 4 distinct seasons, heating and a/c take care of things during summer/winter.  During fall/spring I run a Frigidaire de-humidifier most of the time... unimaginable how much water is in the air.  The past two months I have dumped the water bucket (1.6gals) every day just to keep between 55-60%.  (note - I move it around but run it more often in my guitar room)
 
Also, I have two Thermo-Hygrometers, one in my guitar room and the 2nd one at the other end of the house.  Mine came from AmbientWeather.com in Arizona, model# ws-03, ~ $13ea... many choices for these devices.  Pros often use very expensive devices that are more accurate but I don't see the need for home use.

The unfinished wood inside the guitar gradually picks up or looses moisture from the air.  Too wet the wood swells / lower bout bellies.. too low and the dry wood cracks.  Just a fact of being a guitar owner.  Many people run humidifiers in the winter months for too dry.  I installed a whole house AprilAir system that I can switch on when humidity goes below 40%.  I check the hygrometers year round.

Winter is now arriving and I will reduce use of the Frigidaire de-humidifier as needed.  bert

This is the first new acoustic I've bought in a few years so I was pretty excited for it to arrive.
You all know what it's like waiting for that big brown truck to arrive, it's torture!
After waiting all day on Friday, UPS finally pulled up to my house at 6pm and as luck would have it, I was home alone.
The weather was mild so no need to wait for it to acclimate, I opened it right up.
This is the first Eastman I've bought that didn't come with a nice hard-shell case. Instead, it came with an Eastman padded gig bag. It's a decent gig bag so no complaints there. I unzipped the gig bag and sitting inside was a really beautiful looking guitar. I've always liked more traditional looking guitars with natural finishes but the stained, satin finish on this guitar is really something. I checked all sides looking for scratches, dents or imperfections and I could find none. Visually the guitar was perfect!

Normally, I won't even strum a new guitar until I change the strings and take a look at the setup.
But, I'm a little out of practice so I dove right in. Big mistake, the first strum sounded, boxy, dull and lifeless and I immediately thought I made a mistake buying this guitar. I started thinking, will it be cheaper to send it back and eat the shipping both ways or sell it at a loss. Then I noticed the strings. I could tell they were old and you could see some crud on each one as if this guitar had been played quite a bit on this set of strings. I still didn't have much hope as it didn't sound good at all but I figured let's give it a fair chance with a fresh set of D'addario EJ16 and see what's what. Before changing the strings, I checked the relief, measured the action and checked the nut. The guitar was set up perfectly with the action a hair under 6/64" at the low E and a hair above 4/64" at the high e. The relief was set perfectly and the nut slots were cut perfectly. It was set up exactly the way I would do it myself. There was a good amount of saddle showing and the bottom of the D string measured exactly 1/2" off the top. The neck angle on this one is perfect! None of that would matter if this thing sounded like it was stuffed with a blanket after a string change. Luckily that was not the case. A new set of strings and a few minutes of playing made this guitar come alive. No more boxiness which is what I was most concerned about with a small guitar like this. I only had a few minutes before my wife came home so I put it in its case with more than a little relief that it wasn't a dud. 

I spent the weekend playing it and I just could not put it down. It is an amazing little guitar that is so much fun to play. It's pretty loud for its size and it's super responsive. The notes just fly off the fretboard. The nut width is 1-11/16" but it doesn't present any issues for me like I thought it might. There is no boxiness to it at all and it is super balanced. My other guitars seem so bass heavy in comparison.

Anyway, I went from super low when I heard that first strum to super high as I was playing it for hours and hours this weekend! I bought it from Sylvan Music in Santa Cruz, CA. and they were great to deal with. As I've said the setup was perfect so it got me thinking about how it got that way. They must have set it up there at Sylvan but it would be odd to set up a guitar without asking the customer how they like it. Maybe it was a return which would account for the played in strings. But would someone do a setup on it unless they planned to keep it? Some stores won't even take a guitar back if the setup has been adjusted.  I remember reading a review of this model either here or on the AGF and someone mentioned that the sales manager at Sylvan liked it so much, he kept one in the back for his own use. Maybe this was that one and that would explain the strings and the setup. None of it really matters as it is a keeper for sure. I'm so happy to have gotten this beauty and at $719 shipped, it was a steal!

Hey all,

Just took delivery of my T486:

https://flic.kr/s/aHskMb5ny5

Having it in my hands for the first time on Friday was a big deal for me; this is the first and only time I've ever bought a guitar sight unseen, and the anticipation was tremendous since I made the decision to buy back in July this year.

So what made me decide to buy the guitar? In October 2017, I took a holiday to New York and paid the obligatory pilgrimage to Rudy's Music in Soho. Like anybody who has never been inside before, I was overwhelmed by the sheer number of vintage instruments, not least the wall of Pensa guitars that looked absolutely incredible. I even got to say hello and shake hands with Rudy himself, which was an extra special moment.

However, I soon found myself walking towards a modest selection of semi-hollows hanging on the wall. I realised they were not Gibson or any other brand, but Eastman. I picked up what turned out to be a T486, plugged it into a Carr Rambler, and I was instantly in love. I must have played that guitar, clean, for 15-20 minutes. Just giving it the work out, and I was impressed to say the least.

It took a lot of self-restraint for me to not buy the guitar on the spot, because I was frankly wary of any issues that might crop up as a result of transporting a guitar internationally; I had a stopover in London, and I was not emotionally prepared to arrive back in Singapore with a potentially broken guitar.

When I got back, I took my time to find all kinds of alternatives but outside of Gibson VOS/Historic models, it seemed like all other semi-hollow models were just try-hards. I tried Ibanez, Gretsch, D'Angelico, Edwards, Orville. I eventually found a second-hand AR371-CE2 that I adored and bought right away, but it did not fill that T486 shaped hole in my heart.

I took a holiday to Tokyo earlier in 2018, and thought to myself that I would try as many Gibson ES-335s that I could lay my hands on; sure enough, they just did not blow me away at all, even though I tried 7-8 pieces across different eras. I realised that if I wanted the brand name on the head stock for a decent guitar, I'd have to pay upwards of USD2500 for a second hand piece. As a side note; it really is a testament to the drop in Gibson's build quality when you look down the neck and observe that the neck itself was not straight. I'm not talking about relief, because some forward-bow is okay, I'm talking side to side dimensions. On one particular 2014 piece, it looked like a train track after an earth quake.

So here are my first impressions of the T486 as it arrived on Friday. Remember that it was the first time in over a year that i had laid hands on one, since that fateful day in Rudy's Music:

Build quality - 4.5/5

I own 7 Gibsons, and have built at least 6 parts-casters in my time. Played plenty of Suhr, PRS, Tom Anderson etc. and this baby is build solidly. I recall picking up the T486, holding down an E chord and just strumming it once. The sheer resonance and sustain was incredible, I could only think to myself: damn, this sustains as well as my '96 Les Paul Standard. And that thing sustains for a REALLY long time.

I spent ages looking over the guitar, and could only spot 5 things that made me go "Okay, that could have been done better."

1. The F-hole binding was not as clean as I hoped; rather than cutting the binding at an angle in the 'flare' of the f-hole, they chose to cut it at right-angles, causing an unsightly gap.

2. Very small, minute specks of paint in the binding that got coated over with clear coating.

3. A weird bump in the upper horn on the guitar's face. Very subtle, but visible when held up to the light, or if you went looking for it with your hands.

4. Fret ends could have been more even, and you can tell that they luthier had sanded the fingerboard edge a little bit more towards the nut vs the upper fret areas for a "worn in feel", but that just made the guitar feel less finished overall.

5. This is very minor, but the image they used on the website showed a strip of binding at the neck joint between the top and bottom of the guitar, but this was missing on mine, which I felt was a shame.

Everything else was perfect. I'm obviously nit-picking, but I'm just being honest.

Playability - 4.5/5

I do wish Eastman could provide us with clearer and more specific information for their guitars where the neck dimensions and profiles are concerned. Apart from the nut width, there are no further clues about what neck I am getting. I am a neck feel kind of guy, and although the T486 does have a comfortable slim C neck, I wished I had known more about how little shoulder that C profile had.

I find the neck profile similar to a Fender American Standard neck from the late 90s to 00s, whereby there is a slim, fast feel. The fingerboard edge did feel somewhat "sharp" due to the smaller shoulders. Wearing the guitar higher allowed me to understand the logic behind this profile, as chords felt very comfy; but as part of my personal preference, I do wish it was "fatter/chunkier" overall.

Accessibility is amazing, and I like how the neck heel has been sculpted to be as small as possible; I particularly love how the cutaways flow into the neck heel joint, such that you get this amazing flowing sensation when running your finger from bottom horn to the top horn.

The factory set up was a medium height, strung with NYXL 10-46. This is my preferred string gauge, and the tension was not too much: I could easily do whole step bends on the 3rd fret. I do prefer doing a top-wrap on the Tune-o-matic tailpiece, but that's just personal preference, and I will use that when i do my next string change.

Tone - 5/5

I have a litmus test for guitars; as alluded to earlier, I actually play then unplugged first to get a feel of the instrument. By doing so, I can understand how the instrument sustains, how loud it is acoustically, and how much the body resonates. In this case, the T486 is loud when unplugged, sustains beautifully, and vibrates through the entire guitar body.

Plugging into my Mesa Boogie Subway Rocket set up for clean, I noticed that the Seymour Duncan Jazz neck was rather dark, eliciting a fair amount of 'wooliness' with the tone knob all the way to 10. Meanwhile, the 59 in the bridge had a little less body than I would have liked; a less kind way of describing it would be "thin", but it has mostly been saved by the fact this is a guitar with a lot of air in it, so a fair amount of warmth does come through. Putting it through some overdrive brought this T486 to life: plenty of Clapton-esque "woman tone" in the neck, I could cop a decent in-between Jimmy Page tone a la "Since I've Been Loving You". With the bridge pickup, I was able to go anywhere from 'Johnny B Goode" through Brit-pop rhythms and with more gain, I could coax plenty of mean classic rock sounds.

The guitars innate sustain allowed for beautiful long notes without having to bump up the gain. I eventually chose to lower the neck pickup on the bass side, and increase the screw heights for more definition in the low end, while dropping the bridge pickup on the treble side to reduce shrillness. This gave me a very nice balance across all 3 pickup settings, and this has allowed me to be happy for now.

Conclusions

With an MSRP of USD1299, the Eastman does not come cheap. Locally, I paid the equivalent of USD1400 due to shipping and taxes. The extra $100 doesn't bother me that much when the overall build quality, tone, playability and looks all come together into a package that is frankly unrivalled by anything other than PRS, Gretsch or Gibson VOS/Historic stuff.

Would I buy this guitar again? Absolutely. The Classic finish with the flamed top is outspoken without being outlandish or vulgar; I can already see myself cutting several tracks with my funk/soul band with this guitar's tones holding down a solid rhythm, or providing accents as a counterpoint to the strat tones I also use. It sounds great both clean and driven, and I've yet to try anything in this price range that comes close in terms of the specs and quality that you get for the money.

Just received my latest monthly copy of Acoustic Guitar through the letter box, and bad news. It is now going to be published once every two months. The 'good' news as they tell it is that each copy will now have an additional 16 pages. Whoopee!!!! 16 additional pages of advertising no doubt. Maybe they will reduce the price by about 50%, maybe …

As a matter of interest, has anyone actually ever had to have the neck of their Eastman reset? I suppose the oldest Eastmans are not that old compared to those of other, longer established brands (Martin et al) so one might expect to hear of fewer such problems.