alchemy acoustic labs

Posts Tagged ‘collings forum’

We offered to do one guitar for one member of the online Collings Forum community free of charge. The recipient selection process took some time, but in the end we decided to go with one of the moderator’s guitars. Elambo is an audio engineer, studio musician and the furthest thing from an AAL cheerleader we could find. We wanted an objective opinion. We’re posting our results and opinions before Elambo does, in an effort to be as forthright as possible. Let the chips fall.

The Julius Borges OM-28 was one of our favorite guitars we’ve ever played or had in our labs. The build quality and playability is just phenomenal. It was already optimized for volume, versatility and projection by design when we received it.

Post AO1 process, it did not come up as dramatically in amplitude (volume) as some other guitars we’ve processed. It had more increase in sustain than volume. But where we felt that the process enhanced its sound the most was in the evening out of the notes, filling in the bottom end in the lows and low-mid ranges. It truly opened up the guitar in the way that age and playing (a lot) would do.

We’ll post updates to this guitar as the story continues to unfold. For now, here are some audio and video files chronicling the event.

Audio Files:

Elambo’s Borges (Before A01 Process  01)

Elambo’s Borges (After A01 Process  01)

Elambo’s Borges (Before A01 Process  02)

Elambo’s Borges (After A01 Process  02)

We’ve got a lot going on right now, but this also qualifies as news. In case you haven’t seen it, we’ve been part of a rather lengthy and spirited thread on the Online Collings Forum.  I have enjoyed participating in it and answering as many questions as I can. We have had a few guys from the forum call and schedule guitars to be sent in. This is the first of them. The guitar belongs to “Maui” in Hawaii and it was sent at probably the greatest personal expense so far (Calton cased guitar to and from Hawaii to Pittsburgh is not cheap) The thread on the forum is now 25 PAGES long and has been viewed over 7400 times at last count.  With all those things in mind, we really felt like we were on the hotseat on this one so we recorded everything including our before and after commentary. As we have done all along, we’re not going to publish emails here but  we’ll be happy to put anyone interested in the process in touch with the guitar’s owner or the player at any time, as long as they are open to being contacted. Please keep in mind, this is a more casual, shaky-cam style video intended for entertainment  – not  a discerning audiophile demonstration. There are new MP3 files of this guitar HERE and better quality .wavs are available upon request.