My Marcus Dominelli guitar

 630's ...  Dominelli on the right

Well I managed it: a month of extremely limited guitar playing followed by an entire month without using my left hand on the guitar at all.  Quite an achievement, if I say so myself.

The most notable results of this seem to have been that I have totally forgotten anything I ever knew how to play on the guitar, and my finger-ends hurt. Oh and the pain in my arm is much improved, but sadly not totally gone.  To be honest, if I didn't have classical guitar camp coming up in just over a week, I'd probably let it sit a bit longer, but there's ensemble music to prepare, so very gingerly, I've picked up the guitar and am working on small segments.

Actually it's the perfect stuff to practice on - nothing too challenging to fret, and I can practice sight reading too.  So long as my arm doesn't get any worse, I figure I'm good for the time being.

Anyway this is the perfect time to do an initial review of my new Marcus Dominelli double top 630/50mm guitar.  Spruce and cedar top (with the Spruce uppermost) and Indian rosewood back and sides.

Really really nice workmanship - very precise understated elegance.  And the main goal - easy for me to play - is more than accomplished.   Marcus carved the neck to a profile I sent him from my other guitar and it feels just the same, only everything is a bit closer and easier to reach.

To the main question - how does it sound?  What attracted me to these guitars was the very sweet, penetrating yet full trebles - and this guitar lives up to that expectation.  An absolute pleasure to play the higher notes and just listen to that bell-like sound.  And it's loud.  And resonant - very resonant. That's before taking off the soundport cover (yes it comes with a little magnetic piece of curved rosewood to cover the soundport in case it's too loud).

A couple of things I'm still fine-tuning - on arrival the 3rd string sounded a bit dull compared to that gorgeous crystalline sound on the top 2.  Replacing the d'Addario nylon with a denser Savarez carbon string seems to have sorted that out.  UPDATE Aug 8: best yet - Hannabach Goldin HT super high carbon on the third string.  I experimented with some La Bella medium tension strings (thinking of my arm) and they work fine on the bass but the trebles lost a lot of punch, so back to HT's on the trebles - currently nylon Hannabachs. UPDATE Aug 8: back to the D'Addario HT except for the 3rd string.  I'm now pretty happy with the trebles, but may be experimenting more with the basses.  How do the basses sound?  I definitely think the spruce comes out in this guitar - I think of cedar as offering a mellower softer sound: this guitar is darker and more focused, and certainly not lacking in the loudness department.   It will be interesting to see if the cedar comes out more as it gets played in, Overall I am more than happy with it. My (admittedly non-scientific) test of a guitar is simply whether I want to go on playing it once I start and this one passes - I don't want to put it down!  I suspect it will be quite a while before my other guitar gets an outing...