Questions & Observations:
Hi Armand, I feel sad & don’t really know how to best address this so I’ll get right to the point.
I’d be lying if I didn’t say I’m a bit disappointed. But I trust you & German, will be able to fairly & quickly resolve this.
Finally had a chance to inspect my guitar up close. Other than electing not to go with exotic woods, I expected a top-of-the-line work of art from a master luthier. In so many ways it is stunning and beautiful as expected. And yet my guitar has, what I would objectively call, some blemishes & inconsistencies. The pictures speak for themselves. (At this point they were freehand shots. When I post my guitar’s build story on Delcamp & Acoustic Guitar forums I’ll take these shots with a tripod.) In addition to the details that follow, the general difference I noticed compared to other GVRs is that the other ones are so much smoother, while mine shows the slight unevenness, like it wasn’t smoothed out enough.
I’d like to know how & why this happened.
The finish of that customer’s mockup (the one that basically convinced me to order my guitar), looks so much more refined than my finished guitar, from the purfling to the rosette to the finish of the fretboard in the highest registers. I had taken multiple pictures, and I believe the one that follows is a good objective point of comparison for my observations. In addition, I pulled some photos off of one of German’s 2017 Custom Elites from Guitar Salon through Reverb, link HERE. Where necessary, I’ve highlighted the areas for your convenience. (Advance apologies for incorrect verbiage as I’m obviously not a professional in that regard.)
If you remember, after trying out that mockup model of another client of yours before it was built with the exotic woods, the most important reason for my significant investment is playability, and one of the details included the slightly slanted soundboard that the sample had. Here’s the picture. Just realized it was not incorporated in my guitar…NOT the floating part, but the angled board to allow even more access to the frets. (See pic below)
1. Headstock: Other GVRs were smooth on that gold highlight. Mine looks pretty jagged from both angles. The curves on my headstock are not as smooth as the 2017 GVR. The last 2 pictures of the headstock by the “kink” look pretty rough as well. One side of the center accent strip looks like it’s missing something. My understanding is the headstock is a signature, and sure enough on my first Delcamp post HERE, one of the first responses was a comment about how nice it was. (I did not respond directly at this point…)
2. Rosette: Spot 1 looks like color bleeding out of the circular edge, Spot 2 looks like a speck of something got stuck where it wasn’t supposed to be, Spot 3 is like 2 uneven specks that shouldn’t be there. The 2017 GVR’s rosette is flawless, as are many others I looked online.
3. Fret board, upper frets: Lower frets look fine (for comparison), while the upper frets, around the metal frets look pretty rough.
4. Other spots: I think the pictures are self-explanatory. Mostly uneven details & a “broken” line, etc. More than anything else, I don’t see these kinds of imperfections or inconsistencies in pictures of his other guitars, even in the lower priced Concert ones online. In the picture below, it seems the left anle detail skews upward…
5. Rough finish of French polish: Turns out night light shines on it perfectly. First one is the one I sent you a text about. Second one is another almost round spot a little behind where my right elbow touches the guitar when playing.
6. Wood used on the back: Comparing what German picked out, and what’s on the finished guitar, I don’t see the resemblance. Grain’s not the same. What he picked out was way tighter in grain. Thought I had an individual shot of the soundboard, but guess I didn’t, other than the partial below.
With my crazy schedule, I’d appreciate a timely response and getting this resolved in the quickest and most practical manner. Thank you as always.