Ashton Twelve-String Acoustic Dreadnought Reviews 5

I bought this guitar from Wollongong's (NSW, Australia) World of Music. It was the last model in the store, on it's own little stand, for $AU350, which is chicken-feed. I bought it for it's crazy, jangly sound, and because it makes a good counterpoint to solo vocals and playing technique.

The sound is massive. Huge. It is very bass-heavy, and loud as high-hell. Also, the tone of the guitar is very clean and quite beautiful to listen to. The action is surprisingly good for a twelve-string, and the neck is fantastic. The tuners are quality, and keep their place for a very long time. The physical appearance of the guitar is also fantastic. A very pale wooden body with a deep reddish neck and back.

The dreadnought body is quite uncomfortable for most playing. Both standing up and sitting down it isn't exactly comfortable... but I imagine that's more the character of the dreadnought style, as opposed to the guitar. The head of the guitar doesn't allow much room for your regular acoustic-strap, which is inconvenient. The guitar IS NOT electro-acoustic. This isn't nessecarily convenient for gigging large venues, but is no problem owing to the nature of microphones, and the HUGE sound coming from that thar' sound hole. Other than these minor things, there is nothing to complain about with this particular guitar.

Standard hardwood (cheap) neck, glued and bolted to the body. The body is also cheap hardwood, but extremely resilient along with yielding a good tone. The saddle is glued to the body, with standard pegs holding the strings in place. As I said earlier, the tuners are high-quality. It seems to be a class act, pulled off with budget materials.

Buy this guitar. That is all I can really say. I am still marvelling at it's great tone, massive sound and high playability. The best $350 I ever spent, seriously. I play guitar professionally, and am very surprised at it's quality, for such a low price. Anybody interested in any form of acoustic music should look into this area seriously.

Joshua McGrath rated this unit 5 on 2002-02-27.

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