Guitar review: Takamine EF-261SBL

Takamine EF-261SBL
This guitar is an electro-acoustic flattop with cutaway, meaning that it has a built in piezo pickup under the bridge. Bought it new in ’98 (not sure ‘bout the year) from Hagstrøm musikk.

Features: 9
A small bodied electro-acoustic guitar with cutaway. It has a solid cedar top, laminate mahogany back and sides in black gloss finish with white and soundhole rosette and body binding. Mahogany neck with a rosewood fret board with medium sized nickel frets and no binding. It has a 1 9/16" nut and a two piece compensated saddle, both made of bone which isn't always the case in this price range. The electronics are an under the saddle pickup and a built in graph-EX preamp with the controls on the upper bout near the neck. The chrome endpin doubles as a jack socket, no strap pin on the neck side.

The body shape is what Takamine calls FXC, which means a small upper bout, narrow hip and a lower bout that has a full dreadnought width. A 25 3/8" scale length, nickel Gotoh tuners and silver Takamine logo. And six (count'em six) strings, which in my case is usually a standard set of 012s or 013s phosphor bronze, but I've tried as light as 010s.


Sound: 6
This is actually a difficult one. This guitar is really meant to be plugged in, and has a design that is optimized for that. And there is no secret that this has taken its toll on the acoustic sound. However, it still is an acoustic guitar, which means I should say something about the unplugged sound.

Unplugged the Takamine sounds a bit muted and little complex. It is a small body, so it one should expect a huge dreadnought sound with lots of bass. Still, the loss of tone is probably due to the construction rather then body shape. I've played smaller guitars then this that have a huge tone. I've read raving reviews of the unplugged sound of these Tak's, but those are from people with their ears up their @ss. Takamines are not built for pure acoustic tone.

But this guitar is designed to be plugged in and used as a stage guitar, in it's when it's plugged in this guitar shines. The bridge piezo and graph-EX preamp is as good as it gets (for a piezo, that is). The graph-EX has a three band equalizer and volume control for dialing in your tone.


Action, Fit&Finish: 10
It's manly black!

Action, Fit&Finish (serious): 7
There is nothing negative to say about the workmanship, the guitar looks solid and well built, both on the outside and inside. Tight fit on all parts and no glue residues anywhere. The finish has held up very well over the years, and there are only a few scratches after my abuse. However, the finish is a bit on the thick side, which is a bad thing for acoustic instruments.

I can't remember how the action was from the factory, but Hagstrøm did a great setup for me, so it's now low and buzz free. Maybe a tad on the low side for hard strumming or slide, but for flatpicking and fingerstyle it's good. The frets are very good, I like the size and feel of them, and the fret job is really superb. Smooth all the way down the neck, nice and even. And the cutaway gives extra reach at least up to the 17th fret.


Reliability/Durability: 9
I never played the Takamine live (living room strummer, anyone?), but it has survived several flights and I haven't done much maintenance other then changing the preamp battery and wipe it down with a rag once in a while. And it hasn't needed anything else, the neck is rock solid and frets still in pretty good shape (but then, I'm used to worn down guitars anyway). As stated above, the finish is still nice and shiny.


Overall Rating: 7
Really like the comfortable body shape, the frets and the plain look of this thing. One the negative side, it could have had a wider nut, thicker neck and a better unplugged sound.

Edit:
Until I figure out how to do this better, here are some MP3 samples on plugged vs unplugged sound of the Tak':
Plugged in.
Unplugged.
Some basic finger-picking, strumming and a taste of flat-picking in there. The tracks were recorded simultaneous.