Takamine 12 String Guitar

Discover awesome blues guitar secrets that 90% of guitar players don't know?

Takamine has a long history as a quality guitar maker. Apart from a brief spell of insanity in the 80's, Takamine has specialized in acoustic and acoustic-electric guitars only and this has resulted in moderately priced guitars of exceptional quality.

This twelve string follows in that fine tradition. The maple neck and sides and spruce top give the guitar a loud, clear voice acoustically and the built-in EQ and active pickup let you use that same beautiful tone on your favorite amp.

On a twelve string guitar, a well-dressed fretboard is vital. One raised fret can ruin that gorgeous harmonic sound and make a difficult job even harder. Takamine delivers a smooth rosewood fretboard with frets that are perfectly dressed straight from the factory. After playing my old pawn-shop 12 stringer all these years, I found myself gliding effortlessly up and down my new 'Tak.

The inlays are just beautiful and like everything else on this guitar, show the mark of care and craftsmanship. On cheaper guitars you can often feel a ridge where the inlays are, but not on this guitar. The inlays are smooth and flush and the abalone looks fantastic.

Tuning keys are an important consideration too, and this girl has 12 of them! I can tell you that tuning an uncooperative 12 string is no simple task and its not something you want to have to repeat after every song. Like my other Takamines, this 12 string holds a tune a good long time and the machines turn evenly and consistently. The factory strings sounded fine, but like any guitarist, I have my favorites (D'Addarios sound GREAT on this thing) and the pull-through bridge made re-stringing it a breeze.

Those of us who started on electrics and graduated to acoustics know the value of a good cutaway. You wouldn't think you would need to get to the top end of the fretboard very often, but it does happen and this guitar has an excellent cutaway so you can get to that very last fret.

This guitar exudes craftsmanship on every curve, it really is a pleasure to play. A good quality guitar can mean the difference between stumbling through a song or hitting it spot-on, and this guitar gives me the confidence to face the music.