Bob Kovacs is an engineer and singer/guitarist. He can be reached at pvreditor@yahoo.com.
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The Takamine AN10 is a best buy, all solid wood dreadnought acoustic guitar with a bright sound that excels at finger picking and recording.
In fact, the guitar is shockinglygood, considering its $879 list price - with forward-shifted, scalloped bracing, all solid wood construction and hand-fit dovetail neck joint. A made-for-Takamine hardcase is an extra $100.
This review is for the acoustic-only AN10; there is also an electrified, cutaway version, the EAN10C.
Features
The AN10 is a beautifully made guitar that shows a lot of attention to detail. Our sample obtained from the manufacturerwas virtually flawless.
The first striking thing about the Takamine AN10 is that the top is made of solid cedar instead of the much more common spruce. The grain of the cedar is clean, with no spots or blemishes. The wood is attractive through the natural satin finish, which also contributes to its loud and open sound.
The AN10's rosewood bridge has split saddles; the B and high E strings are on one small saddle, and the remaining strings wrap over the other. I have seen this type of bridge before but only on more expensive guitars.
In addition to the split saddle, the strings are routed through the end of the bridge instead of being fitted down through the bridge and top. This bridge design is said to move the top more than the string-through-body bridge, resulting in a louder, projecting sound, which is indeed the case.
The rosette around the sound hole is made of wood, and there is similar wood detailing around the body of the guitar. The body is bound in a tasteful ivory plastic binding.
The sides, back and neck of the AN10 are made from solid mahogany, which is satin-stained a reddish color. The construction materials and quality of the AN10 are first rate. The two-piecemahogany back has a very thin ivory-looking strip between the halves.
The guitar's neck is 25.5-inch in scale and is 1.69 inches wide at the nut. The neck is topped with a rosewood fretboard. The smooth-feeling, gold-painted,tuning machines have pearloid, plastic knobs. They look like Gotoh tuners. The AN10 comes from the factory strung with very bright-sounding, D'Addario EXP light-gauge strings (more on that later).
Inside, the guitar body was clean and well detailed. The top bracing is scalloped to provide both louder and deeper sound. I examined the AN10 carefully with an inspection mirror and was impressed at the lack of visible glue and at the appearance and quality of the construction.
The Audition
Playing the AN10 was a joy with its low action and a thin, fast neck. With the bright D'Addario EXP strings, fingerpicking produced a pleasant and bright tone with plenty of bass during those runs between chords.
Because of the split-bridge configuration, I noticed the gaps between the strings were not even between the B and G strings. By loosening the string tension with the tuners, I was able to slide the strings along the saddle to get them more evenly spaced. Still, the space between the strings was a bit more than I am accustomed, and it took me about 30 minutes of playing before my fingers squarely hit the strings where I expected.
The AN10 sounded very good strumming but my thin pick brought out all this guitar's brightness. For my taste, it was too bright with the D'Addario EXP strings. A set of Martin bronze lights mellowed out the sound, making it much more balanced, but yet with plenty of volume on the top and bottom.
With a cedar top, however, the maximum volume comes quickly. If you put forth an extra hard strum, the AN10 simply doesn't give that extra bit of volume, but sort of compresses the sound. It is not muddy, it just will not get any louder. Thus, this guitar is not ideally suited for hard bluegrass or other rhythm strumming.
The AN10 is, however, a superb guitar for finger picking and folk and country strumming. It alsois ideal for recording. Using a large-diaphragm project-studio microphone and pro preamp, the playback sounded like a much more expensive, high-end, cedar top guitar, such as a Lowden. Recordings of fingerpicked tunes on the AN10 were very clean.
The only negative that I found was minor. The satin finish produced more handling noise when the guitar body slid against my shirt. This was easily picked up by the studio mic, which was only 6-8 inches away. A guitar with a glossy finish makes less handling noise.
Conclusion
The Takamine AN10 is an absolute steal - it is a beautifully made and nice sounding guitar at a very modest price. That is why it has earned one of www.proaudioreviews's 2002 "Best Of" awards. I would love to see Takamine make a version of this with a solid spruce top.
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