Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

The Jasmine S34C is an outstanding value. I'm still having a bit of a diffiuclt time reconciling the guitar I received with the amount of money I spent for it. Mine arrived earlier this date, with the factory box inside a larger Amazon box and more than adequately cushioned from movement with plenty of crumpled packing paper. The guitar inside the factory box proved to about as perfect in build quality as human hands and machines can make such a thing out of the materials it is made from. I inspected mine very throughly before tuning it to pitch and trying it out -including examining the body interior with the sort of inspection mirror used in automotive repair. I looked for flaws, expecting to find some, but I didn't THE NECK: The tuning machines on my example have a positive feel with no backlash in the gears. The nut on my example is of the correct height and is correctly slotted. The fingerboard is a very nice piece of rosewood. The dot inlays on it were correctly done. The frets on mine are all level, properly crowned, polished, and end-dressed. The binding on the neck was skillfully and correctly applied. The neck appears to have been set at an appropriate angle. The satin-matte finish on the neck makes it a fast and smooth thing to slide the hand upon. There is a metal strap button applied in the exact spot I'd have put one on the neck heel myself had one not have been supplied. THE BODY: The laminate sapele on my example is all uniform in general color, with beautifully figured grain. The binding on the body is perfectly executed. Inside the body, everything is neat and tidy -no globs of glue, no whiskered wood. The top on the insturment is often billed as "select spurce." It is a laminated top, but on my example, you have look very, very closely at the end grain of the wood around the sound hole to tell. It appears to be a solid, voidless board, faced top and bottom with almost paper-thin spruce veneers. The laminated top on this instrument reminds me of the tops used on the old "Nippon Gakki" Yamaha instruments. The satin-matte finish so perfectly and evenly applied to the back and side of my example was equally well done on my instrument's top. The simple inlaid black and white ring celluoid or abs rosette around the soundhole was flawlessly done, too. My instrument came with the pick gaurd installed, but I removed it immediately upon completing my inspection of the instrument. It was easily removed by simply slowly peeling it off the sound board, leaving no residue behind. I wrapped it in wax paper as soon as I removed it, so it could be re-installed later, if someone was inclined to do so. I bought this guitar to do lead work on and for that, I generally pick with my bare thumb, index, and middle finger, rather than use a plectrum, so the "scratch plate" isn't something I need on this instrument -hence my desire to remove it. INITITIAL IMPRESSIONS: This is a light and shockingly resonant and responsive instrument and it is pretty much tailor-made for my style of play. Where responsiveness to picking and pick attack is concerned, I couldn't be more pleased. It has very even volume response up, down, and across the fingerboard with equal attack equalling equal volume wherever a note is fingered. Mine has a substantial amount of sustain, too. I tuned it to pitch and played it for about an hour and a half, using the whole neck, and playing pieces with plenty of single string and double-stop bends, lots of hammer-ons and pull offs, and etc. I'm having a hard time believing that a new guitar would stay in tune through all of that, but it did. Tone-wise, I would describe mine as "sweet" and "clear" without being overly "tinny" or overly accentuating the high-end of the tonal spectrum.It has very good note separation, too, in spite of having almost too much sustain. It seems to generate enough volume when picked with the bare flesh of my thumb, index, and middle fingers to work well with microphones -something I'll have a go at tomorrow. Strummed with a plecturm or flat-picked, it puts out a lot of volume for an all-laminate body instrument. It reminds me of everything I liked about my first guitar -an Ovation Balladeer, being similar to that in terms of response to pick attack, even volume and sustain response all over the fingerboard, and being close in terms of tone. What I am still amazed by as I write this is that when I first started playing guitar back in 1980, $30.66 had the same buying power then that the price I paid for my S34C has today, but back in 1980, there wasn't such a thing as a playable guitar to be had for that kind of money. In sum, the Jasmine S34C I received isn't just "a good guitar for the money." It's just a good guitar. Period and full stop. The only "con" to it that I can come up with is that it shipped to me with insanely high string action. I can remedy this easily enough through simply sanding a few thousanths of an inch off the bottom of the bridge. And it isn't really a "con" per se, because even expensive guitars need a "set up". Otherwise, it seems entirely well suited for what I bought it for -an insturment for finger-picked acoustic lead or solo guitar. It isn't something I'd want to flat-pick fiddle tunes on or back a bluegrass jam with as it lacks the "punch" and powerful bass of a good dreadnaught-style guitar. But it seems all peaches and sunshine for what I bought it for and hoped it would do. My expectations were high based on the number of positive reviews this instrument gets. My example has exceeded those expectations. UPDATE 3/7/2016: After giving the instrument some time to acclimate to its new surroundings, I set the insturment up to my taste, tweaking the truss rod a little to get exactly ten thousandths of an inch of neck relief and popping a lower saddle in the bridge to get the string height over the 12th fret where I like it -using a U.S. quarter-dollar coin as a height gauge. I then strung it up with Ernie Ball Earthwood extra-light silk and steel. I only thought I was impressed with instrument as it came from the box. After setting it up and re-stringing it, I am even more impressed than I was initially. This instrument simply doesn't play or sound like the "cheap plywood box" that it essentially is. It is a highly resonant, sweet singing, responsive guitar, even when strung with extra-light silk and steel strings, and even when picking it with my bare thumb, index, and middle finger as I am wont to do. Tuning stability has also proven to be really good so far. Since receiving this, I've already gigged it, where it took nothing more exotic than a humble Sure SM-57 aimed at the 14th fret to get stellar live sound. I've also found that it records really well. To say that I am amazed with this instrument is a bit of an understatement. I'm so impressed with mine that I have literally just purchased another Jasmine S34C from Amazon! Having a second one will allow me to have one in standard tuning and another in altered tuning, and alternate between them in live performance, instead of having to constantly re-tune just one of them. If this second one that I have just ordered is as good as the first one I received, the plan is to put K&K pickup systems in both of them. UPDATE 8/13/2018: I now have several of these instruments. All of them were purchased from Amazon and all arrived on my doorstep in perfect condition, albeit in need of a truss rod and saddle height adjustment. I absolutely could not be more pleased than I am with these instruments. I am something of a guitar geek -the kind who goes to brick and mortar stores and plays everything they've got, but I have yet to play an acoustic guitar that I like better than this model, regardless of price, or who made it, or what it is made from. It plays, sounds, and stays in tune every bit as good as instruments costing significantly more and, as such, this instrument has to be one of the best "bang for the buck" values in music today. In fact, it plays, sounds, and stays in tune better than a whole bunch of guitars costing a whole bunch more money. If I had more space to keep them, I'd buy a few more. Yeah, it's a cheap plywood box and it doesn't have the "solid board" back, sides, and top that so many players think a great guitar has to have. I could care less what the thing is made from or what it looks like. What I absolutely DO care about is sound, and how easy it is or isn't for me to get what I hear in my head out to the ears of an audience. These things do what I want a six-string acoustic guitar to do. There generally no other six string acoustic guitar that I would rather play instead. The more I have played them, the more I appreciate them. The "honeymoon phase" ain't over yet. I have installed K&K pickup systems in two of these for convenient and decent live sound. I use the external K&K pre-amp and the result is something that needs no improvement.