I am thrilled to say that I just received my first tenor guitar a 2016(?) Martin TEN515.
And I owe a huge thank you to Cafe member pheffernan, who first made me aware of this guitar and helped me throughout the somewhat arduous process of wrestling this guitar from the hands of a Guitar Center in Florida and having it shipped to where I'm currently at in Washington state. (It doesn't seem worth it to derail this thread with the full Guitar Center story, but suffice it to say that it involved a "missing case" and later a shipment that was lost in the store that failed to go out.)
Thanks again for all the help, pheffernan.
So, on to the guitar! I got the guitar this morning, brought it inside and gave it some hours to acclimate to the temperature and climate. Then took off the strings, cleaned it, and restrung it (when I received it, it was in Chicago tuning, but I prefer fifths). I put 32w, 24w, 14, 9 for CGDA tuning. The intonation is spot on, and the guitar already sounds so splendid to my ear. It is in near perfect condition. I really love the sound of mahogany guitars, and I noticed over the last year or so that I kept coming back to this dark wood. So it makes me really happy to finally have a mahogany instrument, and a Martin no less! As a previous reviewer of this model on the Cafe mentioned, despite the guitar's small body, there is nothing boxy about the sound. At first impression it sounds sweet and full to me.
I may do a more thorough review of the guitar once when I've had the chance to play it more, but for now I just wanted to share it with you guys. As is probably evident already, I'm really excited to have this tenor in my hands. I'll be travelling for the next year or so, and the small size coupled with the lovely sound of this guitar will make it a wonderful travel companion!
Below are a few pictures and a video. Unfortunately, due to the shipping delays, by the time I received the guitar I was no longer at home with my recording equipment, so a good ol' cell phone video will have to do for the time being.
I'll be back home for a week in a month, at which point I'll record something with a better mic, which I'll add to this thread.
Another cool thing about this guitar, it's had a pick-up installed in it! So the strap button at the end of the guitar doubles as an 1/4" output. So, when I'm back home I'll be sure to record some audio from the pick-up.
New Guitar Day! Woohoo!
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