Pros: Power. Look. Playability. Wood.
Cons: Quality control. Difficult to tune and goes out of tune quickly. Some unpleasand overtones. Very strong wolf tones.
I've been playing for two month. First of all, thanks a lot for great packaging work and quick email responses.
Let's start from cons: Tuners are not the best. It takes 5-10 minutes to tune it more less fine. It may look ok on open strings, but when playing octaves and getting higher - sounds out of tune, and you return to the tuning process again. 6th string on mine guitar flows in tune, so I need to find compromise to make it sounds ok. Plus, goes out of tune after an hour (I have a good ear on pitch). My 300$ flat-top performs much better.
Then, the guitar has some unpleasant tones when playing one interval. And again, make maj7 chords sound strange and out of tune a bit :).
The last thing: my M30D has what they call 'wolf tones'. It means that some notes (B and its neighbors) sound much louder and unbalanced comparing to others. I had to tape the part of the sound-hole to reduce it. IDK how to get rid of this. Without tape it causes headaches (so strong it is). Also, it causes recording and amplification problems. And just sounds unbalanced.
Inside the body, there are some ugly batches of clay inside. Few linings (if this is the correct name of those) are broken. The holes for strings in the tailpiece are skew (meh, how?). Prefer using loop ends strings.
Pros: The guitar is very loud and responsive. I'm addicted to it. It vibrates like crazy in your hands. The easiest touch produces fast feedback and volume. Imagine playing 3mm pick.. Fabulous. Just Fabulous. The sound of my D-hole is more bassy (maybe a bit to much, but fine for me). Also, I admire the fact that fretted notes is on the same volume level as open ones. I mean, the notes on 1st and 13th frets sound the same loud. I've never met this before on acoustics. It is so amazing! The higher notes are not lost in the overall sound and ringing. Also, the guitar is beautiful and looks rich. But there are some minor (really minor) cosmetic flows (where frets are injected, etc.). Wood looks fascinating. Frets and neck are great. Also, I like neck to body join. It's smooth and makes access to upper frets easier. Great solution!
Overall, I hardly can recommend Altamiras. I can recommend only if you are able to check it and return if smth. Looks like quality control is bad. I want a better guitar.
Submitted by: Roydgar on 09/08/2021 10:22:57 AM