Godin A6 Ultra - Natural Semi-gloss Review

Workhorse

I use my Godin A6 Ultra primarily for solo and duo acoustic gigs playing cover tunes (James Taylor, Eric Clapton, John Mayer, Chris Stapleton, et al.) I do not utilize the stereo option of running 1 cable for acoustic and another for the electric pickup. I plan to try this in the future, but for now I don't feel like lugging an amp to gigs in addition to my PA. That said, I find… read more a lot of value in playing direct into the PA and mixing in the humbucker to fatten up my tone on solos. I have friends who gig that don't love this guitar. They play very hard and are more accustomed to a full body that they can bang away on for a percussive element. For me, I have a pretty mellow attack, and I'm often doing a lot of single note lead playing. Feedback is almost never an issue with this guitar. It's great for late night playing when my 4yo is sleeping. I highly recommend it.

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Doesn't get any better.

I wrote a previous review of this fine guitar a few years back (scroll down for that) and since then, I did have to replace the tuners on it because the plastic heads on a couple of them broke (no big deal). It has been said that a picture is worth a thousand words and in keeping with that I have to say that "sound" also fulfills that adage. That being said, if you want to hear… read more what this guitar sounds like in a live situation, just click on the provided link. This was a live improvised performance at "The Lost Chord coffeehouse" in Port Colborne, Ontario (Canada) on March 19, 2014. My younger brother Mich had written a blues tune and wanted me to accompany him onstage. Completely unrehearsed (except that he sang me a couple of bars of the tune and we agreed on the key to accommodate his C harp). I plugged my Godin A6 Ultra into the sound system and away we went! Unfortunately a friend who was photographing the event switched his camera to video mode a bit late and missed the opening bars and the soundman turned the volume down at one point thinking we were done. Fortunately he realized his mistake, turned the sound back up and here you have it. Although I have 9 other guitars (acoustic and electric) I'm so glad I had the Godin there that night!

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Godin

unbelievable love it ! blew away both my Martins !

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Fantastic instrument

It plays like a dream and sounds like one, too. I've wanted a solid body acoustic guitar for years and glad I settled on this one. Sweetwater's sales engineers are the best.

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Perfect for My Playing Style and Venues

I am a solo acoustic guitarist in a three person vocal group. We play restaurants and bars that do not offer optimal spaces to set up - there is no "stage." Usually it's a corner from which they move a table or two. Set up is throw-and-go. Consequently we set up tight, usually not in the best place in relation to our PA. As a result of that, I have constantly fought feedback… read more wars with my guitars using various pickups, EQing, phase reversal and creative positioning techniques. All this in concert with an attempt to get a full, balanced tone from the instrument through the PA. The obvious answer was to go electric, but I wanted that acoustic tone and fullness. The A6 Ultra seemed to be an obvious theoretical solution, but they are hard to find so I watched a bunch of "reviews" on YouTube; but nobody was doing what I do, which is to finger pick the guitar using brass fingerpicks. So I really didn't know how it was going to sound. But I went ahead and ordered one from Sweetwater. It turned out to be the absolute solution to my problems. It sounds tremendous through the PA, big and full just as I'd hoped. With enough volume you can get anything to feed back, but as of yet I have not been able to get this guitar to feedback at any frequency. For my needs, perfect. I had also anticipated that EQing might be difficult to get the sound I want, but I find I simply have to set the PA channel flat, and handle all the EQing with the instrument itself. I'll no longer have to carry my Baggs PADI to gigs to compensate. I should add that I am primarily concerned with the acoustic sound, and I believe that is where this guitar shines. The humbucker, while touted by many reviewers, is best used, in my view, to augment the acoustic sound and smooth out some of the harshness often associated with piezo transducers. I use it sparingly if at all. As I said, I am currently a solo guitarist. But were I playing acoustic in a band situation, this is exactly the instrument I would use.

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