The slender body brings the playing area closer to the strumming or picking hand, so if you're required to play complex parts, this might be worth considering. The 000 body size makes for an easy guitar to hang around the neck and play standing up. Strung with Martin strings, the action is medium to low, and the neck is shaped to give the player no surprises in the performance department. The grain pattern is sure to vary from instrument to instrument, so shop around and choose one that you like. In fact, the subtle graining of the mahogany glows beautifully through the matt, as opposed to hiding behind a sea of shiny reflections, which would be the case with a gloss finish. That said, it's certainly not smothered in the stuff - for instance, there's no unsightly build-up around the dovetailed neck joint - and overall, the look is anything but plastic-y. The smell of the guitar gives away the fact that it is finished in polyester and not nitrocellulose. Instead, Sigma has gone to the trouble of including diamond volutes, just like on much more expensive Martin and Martin-derived instruments. In dark pink and green shell with flashes of gun-metal silver, they offer welcome respite from the sea of matt brown and black, adding a welcome touch of visual class, and managing not to look out of place in the otherwise meagre surroundings.īuilt from solid mahogany all round - no laminates showing around the unbound edges (always a give-away on cheaper guitars of this type) - another happy discovery is that, while the neck does feature tell-tale joins halfway up the heel, there's no messy-looking scarf joint at the headstock. Surprisingly, but itself a subtle nicety, Sigma has chosen to adorn the fingerboard with 42-style abalone snowflake inlays. Spend a little time, though look closer, and the guitar begins to exude its own special beauty.
#Fishman sonitone pickup reviews plus
The dark-stained mahogany of the top, back, sides and neck, striped rosewood headstock veneer plus pitch-black ebony fingerboard and bridge offer little instant reward for the eyes. But in fact, its style is both simple and elegant. The narrow-waisted S000M-15 looks, at first glance, like the plainest of Janes. Built in Korea, it broadly sits between those venerable Martins and their own humbler siblings, but with a spec sheet that makes one scratch the chin and ask: how on earth do they do it for the price? In a timeless, svelte 000 design it appears to offer something to satisfy the needs of many a blues, folk or bluegrass picker or strummer. So, it was with great anticipation that we received this all-solid instrument with onboard electronics. However, we've also looked at Sigma's own laminated versions in the past, and one of these has become an office favourite - often used as a gauge against which acoustics at all price points are judged. We recently reviewed Martin's own wonderful M-series instruments, which gained high praise and converted many players to the 'brown sound'.