Text: Carles Páez

Introduction
You often read or hear that cheap guitars are for beginners. Anything low-priced is mistakenly lumped under the "beginner" label, thereby covering up the product’s shortcomings or flaws. In my view, it is precisely beginners who should get the best guitar possible (within reasonable limits), because many future guitarists end up giving up, sometimes because they tried to start out on a guitar that made the task much harder than normal. Hard because of poor intonation, stiffness or other problems that would trouble even an experienced guitarist.

In today’s test bench, we have a low-priced instrument that offers a cutaway and a preamp, two elements that usually drive up the price of an instrument from any other brand. I think that this time we really can talk about a decent, interesting guitar both for beginners and for intermediate guitarists on a limited budget.

Body and tuners
It is a small-format guitar (in terms of its body), with quite a powerful natural volume. It has a sunburst finish between orange and red, topped off with ivory-colored binding and ornamental details on the sides.

The headstock, like the sides and back, is lacquered in a semi-transparent wine red. A nice aesthetic detail on the headstock is the metal plate (I’d say brass or similar) with the logo. As for the tuners, they are fairly basic but they hold tune, and they have a chrome finish.

We have to be fair and consider the price before passing judgment, so with that in mind, I think the instrument’s overall feel and features are surprising for the little money it costs. A bit stiff (although that also happens with many expensive ones), with a basic but acceptable balance/blend between strings.

The cutaway is very welcome for reaching the highest notes on the fingerboard, and I must stress that with other manufacturers, having a cutaway on the guitar costs (as an extra) almost 40% of what this whole instrument costs.

The preamp
Stagg puts in your hands an equalizer with which you can control mids, lows, highs, presence and volume. It also has a battery status LED and a button for checking the battery level.

The plugged-in sound of the guitar can be shaped with the equalizer, and by playing with some care you can achieve rhythmic balance, getting rather nice final results in recording.

Conclusions
What I’ve heard about the Stagg brand from colleagues at rehearsal rooms and studios is consistent: we’ve always found it especially cheap, both in guitars and in cymbals (the two things we’ve tried in different products). As for cymbals, the truth is that for their price they sound great, according to those who "bash" the drums.

Some time ago I came across another Stagg acoustic guitar at a similar price to this one, and I can confirm that today’s is considerably better, more solid, robust and stable. All in all, I think that for approximately 156 euros you can get a fairly complete instrument that will let you explore everything that can be done with an acoustic and a preamp. The sound is acceptable, the tonal balance is decent for the price and, without a doubt, I don’t think you’ll find anything better on the market at similar prices.

06/01/2004