NAMM 2020: Something is clearly afoot in the world of guitars when it comes to sand-blasted finishes – we've seen them from PRS and Schecter has some ready for NAMM too with its new Silver Mountain range. Now Cort has joined the blasting party.
We have high hopes for Cort guitars – they put out one of the best value guitars of 2019 so we can expect the new GX300s to sound as good as they look.
There's no gloss in sight on these matte black beauties. Cort starts uses a 15 mm solid swamp ash top that’s then sand-blasted for an open-pore finish. Afterwards it's accented with red or gold paint that has been applied only to the wood grains for maximum contrast.
The main body is mahogany and the bolt-on GX300 features the newly designed high-mass hardtail bridge to improve sustain as well as resonance.
The GX300 also has a hard maple neck with a 24-fret pau-ferro fingerboard. Its radius is 15.75’’ (400 mm) with a 25.5’’ (648 mm) scale.
Pickups are a marriage of the iconic with the contemporary via EMG's RetroActive Super 77 dual humbuckers. EMG has built on the classic blueprint of the traditionally wound PAF-style humbucker and incorporated a preamp for enhanced response.
According to Cort these high output pickups 'react unlike anything they’ve heard before'. Sounds promising! The pickups colour match for each of the two finishes is a nice touch too.
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For more info on Cort visit Cortguitars.com
Rob is the Reviews Editor for GuitarWorld.com and MusicRadar guitars, so spends most of his waking hours (and beyond) thinking about and trying the latest gear while making sure our reviews team is giving you thorough and honest tests of it. He's worked for guitar mags and sites as a writer and editor for nearly 20 years but still winces at the thought of restringing anything with a Floyd Rose.