Takamine P5DC Acoustic Guitar
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Takamine P5DC Acoustic Guitar

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TAKAMINE MINEY MOE

The P5DC is a dreadnought cutaway acoustic with a solid spruce top (with scalloped ‘X’ top bracing for enhanced clarity and projection), and solid rosewood back and sides. The bridge is made of rosewood with Takamine’s ingenious split bone saddle design, where the four wound strings sit on a separate saddle to the two unwound strings, for improved intonation. I know a lot of techs that love this feature. The Venetian cutaway gives you easy access to the highest of the 20 frets, and the neck is made of mahogany with a rosewood fretboard. The inlays are made of abalone set inside dots of what appear to be mother of pearl, which looks great against the abalone component of the sound hole rosette. The body binding is quite nice too, with five layers around the edge of the top and an ivory-toned outline around the edge. This particular guitar has been fitted with the new Takamine Soundboard Transducer, a second pickup in addition to the onboard Palathetic under-saddle pickup. An easy and affordable add-on at RRP$179.95 Its signal is accessible via an Aux slider on the CT4-DX Cool Tube preamp, which also features 4-band EQ, two notch-filter controls, volume control and onboard tuner.

 

COOL TUBE, BRO

This is a beautifully playable guitar, aided in great part by the asymmetric neck profile, which places your hand into a comfortable position no matter where on the neck you’re playing. Sonically it’s a very vibrant, punchy, bright, immediate-sounding guitar with incredible projection and incredible low end. The treble isn’t quite as zippy and ‘bitey’ as most dreadnoughts, but that means that this one is more of a team player and more of an accompanists’ or soloists’ guitar rather than a ‘slice through the mix and be a jerk about it’ one. This is the second P5DC I’ve played, and the first to include the soundboard transducer, which turns an already good system into a great one. The Palathetic pickup already sounds better than the average saddle transducer but the ability to add tone from the top itself as well means you get more body, more depth, more fullness and more resonance. It’s the perfect way to hear this guitar in a live setting, and a great asset for recording too.

 

THE ALL-ROUNDER

This is a really great all-rounder guitar which will record very nicely, will project very well in an acoustic environment, and will give you plenty of stage-friendly sound-sculpting when you’re using the onboard pickups and preamp.