It has a white binding on both edges of the fingerboard for the full length of the neck. It has 20 frets, all of which are easily playable courtesy of the cutaway. A nicely designed and well-made body so plenty of points earned there.Ī fairly standard neck made from Mahogany. But being so lightweight will help, as will the cutaway. The Dreadnought shape is not an easy guitar for a very young player to learn on. Therefore, it is not an issue as far as I am concerned. Even if they do use them, and some, of course, don’t use them at all. The reverse argument is that most people don’t harm the guitar with a pick. When you see it, you instantly realize there is something different before you realize the pickguard isn’t there. I think for this guitar, though, it is a purely aesthetic choice. Spruce, for example, is quite soft, and constant contact might not do it too much good. Some think that without a pickguard, you could damage the top tonewood. There are two lines of thought with pickguards. Not something you could forget in the design process. There is an interesting omission, though, with this body, in that there is no pickguard. The decorative marquetry around the soundhole really gives this guitar a classy look. For decor, though, you get some added style. There is a very tasteful white and black binding and edging around the edges of the top. And the whole guitar is given a high gloss finish. An age-old combination of woods that produce a great sound. Spruce then for the top wood combined with a mahogany back and sides. They don’t buckle or change shape and are sometimes preferred by the traveling musician. But on the other hand, laminated wood tops are less susceptible to weather conditions. You understandably don’t get the sound quality you will get from a solid piece of wood. However, there are some advantages to a laminated top. A solid piece of spruce can be expensive, and you usually only find them in guitars costing much more than this. This is a cheaper way of using this tonewood for the top.
It has a Spruce top that is laminated or, as some describe it, layered. Something one or two others could learn from. They make a budget guitar and do the best job of it that they can. They do not have any inflated claims of excellence like some do and haven’t got any wild pretenses as some have.
When you get into the Oscar Schmidt ethos of instrument manufacture, you learn something quite quickly. More on this later.įirst released in 2017, it has gained a reputation of being excellent for beginners and improvers alike. An acoustic-electric 12-string with quite a decent tone. This guitar though is not just an acoustic it has a pickup and preamp. Having a cutaway on this 12-string gives the player more access to the strings. Oscar Schmidt guitars have always been known as a great place to start to learn an instrument. This guitar is a 12-string offering with a classic dreadnought design but with a cutaway. That is something that the two German immigrant brothers would be proud of. The guitars are modestly priced, well-made, and represent great value for money. They are still with us today, but the traveling salesman idea sadly isn’t. But they almost went bust in the 30s however, they survived until they were bought by Washburn in 1978. They flourished, but then came the Great Depression, and things got very hard. Salesmen kept accurate records of what was sold and what people were suggesting, and the company fulfilled the need. Secondly, because they were quite inexpensive and thirdly because they were actually quite good. They were popular firstly because they were available. They, therefore, employed teams of traveling salesmen that would carry the instruments to these areas and sell them. But also because there were even less in some of the poorer areas down in the South of the U.S. For a start, there were not that many around. They didn’t sell their instruments through instrument shops. In the US, they had an interesting marketing ploy. They made a variety of instruments, including guitars, banjos ukuleles, and mandolins. Initially founded in 1871, by the turn of the century, they had five factories in Europe and one in Jersey City.
Oscar was a German immigrant, and he and his brother had an instrument manufacturing company. The story of guitar manufacturer Oscar Schmidt is probably unique. The subject of today’s Oscar Schmidt OD312CE-A-U review has reached us through quite a journey.