Ibanez EWP14 Piccolo Review

The Good and The Bad

I can't complain about the quality of the construction regarding this instrument. It seems very well made and it is a very nice looking instrument. This is my first piccolo guitar, so I don't have anything from my experience to compare it to other than a ukulele or standard acoustic guitar, both of which I play. It can be a bit difficult to get used to if you play a regular guitar… read more because you have a much smaller space to cram your fingers into. Some chords can be pretty tough to play. Playing scales isn't as difficult for me though. The intonation is what bothers me most. If you tune it from A to A, like a piccolo guitar is normally tuned, the intonation on the lower strings is way off. So I tuned it a bit higher, to C to C. That deems to have resolved the intonation issue. So if you are not willing to make that adjustment, then you might not want to purchase this guitar. I like the tone of it. It also projects more sound than my ukulele, even though it is around the same size. Overall, I would give it an average rating.

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Very good with a little set up.

Ibanez EWP14 Piccolo Guitar The good: The ovangkol wood is gorgeous. It looks like wrinkled velvet the way the highlights in the grain ripple in the right light. The photos online do it no justice. It's lightweight and sturdy. The action is fine and the Intonation is actually great when set up the way I have it. The bad: It sounds very, very thin. The lowest 2 strings (open)… read more have no body at all. The upper 4 start to get into the range where an instrument this size can sing. It also doesn't seem to be well thought through. The description says it's built on a tenor ukulele body and, to me, it feels like that's what it wants to be. The neck is too narrow for my medium hands to comfortably build crowded guitar chords like A major. The string spacing is a hair wider than a mandolin, but that spacing works with 4 strings (pairs). Not so much with 6. The narrow neck along with the thin sound make it feel very much like a toy, but it gets worse. The worst trait of this instrument is it's tendency to stretch notes out of tune when played. The low string tension and the tall frets create a situation where it's easy, actually unavoidable when playing aggressively, to push strings all the way down to the fingerboard between frets. With the short scale length, this can bend notes up a full half step as I verified with a tuner. Not a little out of tune - a half step, as in the equivalent of a completely different fret. To avoid this, I have to devote so much attention to keeping a feather light touch that I can't focus on the music at all. If they had made this instrument with mandolin fret wire, that would have helped a ton. Putting a good set of strings on helped mine a bit (I stayed with 10s), but the real solution for me is tuning the whole thing up. The fix: On my 25 5/8in scale Takamine, when it's tuned E to E and capoed at the same length as this piccolo guitar, the voicing is actually B to B, not A to A, so the strings on this little guy are holding less tension than a full size guitar (adding to the bendy problem above). So I actually tuned mine all the way up to C to C. It's just a half step higher than the tension on a standard guitar, so I'm expecting this sturdy little instrument will handle it just fine - especially with light gauge strings. A shorter moment arm bears a lesser load, right? Time will tell. Anyway, tuning C to C does a couple of helpful things. It puts enough tension on the strings that it's a lot harder to accidentally bottom them out between frets, so I can play normally and it stays in tune. Actually, when tuned C to C with good strings and measured with a chromatic tuner, the intonation on frets 1-5 and fret 12 is pretty much perfect across the board with normal finger pressure. I was satisfied at that point and didn't measure any other frets. The other thing tuning C to C does is it moves the whole register up a little closer to that sweet-spot this body size likes. It just works better all around and feels (and sounds) more planned when tuned to C. It now plays kind of like a real instrument. I can get lost in the music instead of constantly getting hit in the face with sour notes. Still, the tone is awfully thin and tinny. I'll eventually try nylon strings and I'm thinking it'll be a better match - warmer and rounder (It's a uke body after all). But that'll require modifying the nut and I'm not quite ready to do that yet. Sweetwater, you guys send me a nut slab, I'll fashion it for nylons and update this review. Deal? My last complaint is the saddle. It's sculpted to give the 5th string a little more length, which is nice, but that little scallop is not centered on the string. It's about 1/8in off, showing that this saddle was likely designed for a full scale guitar and just plopped in this instrument with a "eh... it'll be fine". It just feels lazy. The plastic used is also soft enough to have been damaged by the factory strings. What's worse is that one of the strings was factory installed a little catywampus - coming off the peg at a funny angle and creating uneven spacing between strings. So, after I took those strings off, I was left with a little misplaced gouge in the saddle that the new string wants to fall into. Infuriating. Bottom line: With all it's faults, I still decided to keep it. The intonation issue is fixed for me and nylon strings might round out the tone just enough. I do play a lot of secondary fingerstyle guitar parts in this upper register, but I doubt that I'd ever gig with this instrument. I get much better tone from a real guitar capoed up. Although, with it's full size saddle, it wouldn't be hard to add a pickup to this thing and maybe warm up the tone of those lower steel strings with EQ. Meh. End of the day, it looks good in the collection, it's kinda fun to play and the kids love it. It's a great size for them to learn on and the fact that it engages them may be it's greatest value to me. Its worth $180 for that alone. As it comes from the factory, I'd give it 3 stars. Tuned up to C with good strings, it's a solid 4. I'm leaving 3.5 stars here. Thanks for reading.

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Great guitar for the price

My son loves this guitar. Amazing looks and very good sound. Best atribute of the guitar is its portabilityand the fact that has steel strings. he loves the fact that if he hears a tune or inspiration comes tout of the blue he can play it immediately on the spot.excellent portable guitar for the composer on the move.

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So good i bought 2

This little guitar is fantastic. I set it up, adjusted the truss rod and restrung with 009 strings and tuned up to A#. What a sound! Hard to believe this can be bought for such a low price. All the parts are A+

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Great.

I have had no problems with this guitar, it sounds great and I have easily been able to take in anywhere for fun or even recording. The only suggestion I have is changing the tuning keys. After I did this, the guitar became amazing. I would definitely recommend getting this guitar!

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