Black Finger Chinese Solid Wood Acoustic Grand Auditorium 2023 - Gloss

New guitar as not used, made in China by Black Finger Guitar brands. This guitar is an assemblage of several different guitar styles. As in a Grand Auditorium body with a Taylor style 816 2022 cutaway, which is a half cutaway, although no sound port. The head style reminds me of a slot-head Cassini from South Africa. The neck is African Mahogany split laminated middle full length with Ebony-Maple-Ebony. There is a trussrod. The seams throughout are clean and well glued.

The sides and back were sold to me as as walnut but I believe they may be Shedua/Ovangkol. My experience is Chinese luthier guitars naming of woods is driven by marketing once the guitar is posted for sale. I bought his on Ebay December 2023. The back wood just has a sheen I have not seen in finished Walnut and is pommeled also. My research really makes this look like Shedua.

The inside of the body sides are side braced so definitely the entire guitar is solid wood of high caliber. The soundboard is lovely Bearclaw Spruce and nicely book-matched with small grain lines. They really do match up outside edges to opposite outside edges.The head plate is Walnut on a thin layer of Maple/Paduak/Maple.

Overall there are no defects in the structure, outside, inside, so I believe this to be one of the Chinese CNC guitar factory brands. Perfect finish, excellent fret markers of wood at the 3-5-7-9-12-14-16-18 positions. The fret wire is thin and medium height and unused. The fingerboard is ebony with a side binding that matches. The body binding is meticulous with Ebony, on purfling of Abalone sandwiched between black-white-black purfling.

The kerfing inside is nicely accurately cut Mahogany. The braces are Sitka and appear to be forward x-braced.

Its a lovely guitar made in China with a detail of artistry about it. The tone seems mid-range to and a little slight on the bass side of things.

Soundboard beveled with arm rest.

The machine tuners are locking open in a slotted head, which is very custom made and good looking.

The specs:

41.5" total length

19.7" body length

11 1/8th Upper bout

9 1/4" waist

15 3/'4 Lower bout

Neck joint depth is 3.75"

Heel depth is 4.5"

Scale is 25.25" (yes I remeasured it to be sure)

Sound-hole is 3 14/16"