“Beyond its beauty, the cocobolo contributes to the guitar’s overall projection and sustain”: Cort’s stunning new Gold Series acoustic is a love letter to an exotic tone wood

When we talk about Cort, we are sometimes guilty of focusing on its range of electric guitars, and for good reason. We think of instruments like the G290 FAT II, a classic in the do-it-all S-style genre that balances high-performance and a grown-up aesthetic – and yet it somehow it comes in under a grand.

But the South Korean brand’s acoustic guitars – from the entry-level models such as the super-affordable, MusicRadar-approved GA-DAO to the high-end Gold series models – are no less impressive, and the new Gold Series A-10 Cocobolo is a case in point.

This is a cutaway acoustic electric guitar, which as the name suggests features solid cocobolo on its back and sides. Tone woods don’t get much more decorative than this.

Just look at the pictures below; the pattern on this tropical varietal is ridiculous – it’s tone wood as multi-media. This thing looks like its moving. But tone-wise, cocobolo is pretty serious stuff too. “Beyond its beauty, the cocobolo contributes to the guitar’s overall projection and sustain,” says Cort, describing its tone as balanced.

Paired with a solid spruce top, the A-10 Cocobolo is for those how like their high-end acoustic guitar to come dressed in some finery. There are gold open-gear Grover tuners. The inlays are abalone and pearl. You can of course have too much of a good thing.

With abalone, a little goes a long way, and so it has been tastefully applied here, around the cocobolo rosette, in the fingerboard inlays where it shares space with mother of pearl.

With the cocobolo rosette and padauk and maple purfling binding the body’s top, padauk and maple binding on the fingerboard, there is already an abundance of visual detail on this guitar.

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Away from the aesthetics, the Gold Series fundamentals are typically on point.

You have a Fishman Flex Blend acoustic guitar pickup system, which features both an undersaddle piezo pickup and an internal microphone, the mix of which you can blend to your taste – and the preamp controls also include volume, tone and an onboard guitar tuner.

Cort Gold-A10 Cocobolo - YouTube

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The A-10 Cocobolo’s spruce top is braced with torrefied Adirondack spruce in an X pattern. The fret edges have been treated by hand, smooth all the way. The 45mm nut is bone. The mahogany neck is strengthened with walnut and joins the body with a compound dovetail neck. This is a serious acoustic guitar.

Serious enough for the $2,499 outlay? That price includes a hard-shell guitar case. Check out the demo above to hear it in action, and find out more at Cort.