Godin Review: SD

History:

Purchase: I bought this guitar new from Gigsounds in London, England for £400.00, which included a hard case, a couple of extra packs of ernie balls, and a few tab books. I was actually looking for something just to thrash around on, and maybe use for a back-up guitar. The guy in the shop showed me this baby, and as soon as I plugged in, and had a play around I was sold.

What I Like About This Godin SD: This guitar is made superbly! It is hand-crafted in Canada from the finest quality silver leaf maple (neck & body) and rosewood fingerboard. This guitar just stinks of quality. Now because it has the two single-coil pick ups, plus the humbucker, the range of sounds this instrument can get is phenomenal. It is well balanced and it looks great. Excellent value for money.

What I Do NOT Like About The Godin SD: The major problem with this guitar is the whammy bar/tremelelo system. The guitar goes out of tune very very easily when using it. For me this is not a problem as it is not something I wanted to use with this guitar anyway, so I removed it and did a bit of tinkering and it is fab. Another very small criticism is the fact that it takes a while to adjust to where the selecter switch is positioned. At first I kept switching positions by accident, but once you get used to it, it's fine.

Godin SD Quality Rating: As mentioned before, the guitar is hand-crafted silver-leaf maple neck & body (transparent, pearlescent blue with cream scratchplate), with a rosewood fingerboard. The style of guitar is almost like a cross between a Les Paul and a Strat. It has two single-coil pick-ups and a humbucker at the bridge position, and it has 24 medium frets. There is a 5 way selecter switch to change between the pick ups. It comes with Godin pick-ups, which are OK, but my advice is to get some Seymour Duncan fitted asap. It comes with Gotoh non-locking tuners which are quite sensitive.

Review Summary: There is little more I can say about this guitar. If you are looking for a high quality guitar at a reasonable price, then I don't think you need to look much further than the Godin SD. They come in a range of colours and it is an exremely versatile guitar. If you are looking for that full Les Paul sound it is not be the ideal choice, but get in a shop and play one - you will be very pleasantly surprised! Iwould like to give it a rating of 5 just for the excellent value, but it would be unfair to rate it as high Gibson and Fender's greatest models.

Rating of this Godin product: 4

This Godin SD Electric Guitars Review Submitted By: Mike Matthews

Review Date: 2001-11-28