MusicRadar Verdict
A fine electro-acoustic at an attractive price.
Pros
- +
Acoustic tone, construction.
Cons
- -
'Scratchy' amplified sound.
MusicRadar's got your back Our team of expert musicians and producers spends hours testing products to help you choose the best music-making gear for you. Find out more about how we test.
Adam Black says the basis of its guitars is "quality where it is essential for the player's expressiveness to be transferred to the sound of the instrument". Sounds like grammatically suspect marketing waffle to us...
OK, waffle aside, Adam Black has put a lot of thought into the construction of its guitars. Fancy cosmetic details aren't its bag.
Instead you get dovetail neck joints (good news for tone and sustain), scalloped bracing and good quality hardware like Grover 'heads and a preamp with a built-in tuner.
The best thing about the S-5CE is its acoustic tone. Strum it hard and it fills the room with a beautiful well-balanced sound.
Pick it gently with your fingers and you'll love its crisp top end and deep bass. Whack a microphone on it and we think this guitar would kill in a recording studio.
It's only when you amplify it via the onboard pickup that the enthusiasm dulls a bit. The pickup/preamp setup isn't perhaps quite as satisfying as it could be.
Adam Black may be the newbie in this illustrious line-up but it's off to a flying start. In fact, we reckon the company should forget about all that marketing guff and let its guitars speak for themselves.
“He seems to access a different part of his vast library of music genre from the jukebox-in-his-head! This album is a round-the-world musical trip”: Joe Bonamassa announces new album, Breakthrough – listen to the title-track now
"The Rehearsal is compact, does its one job well, and is easy to navigate without needing instructions": Walrus Audio Canvas Rehearsal review
“The EP635 delivers the unmistakable high-gain aggression and clarity that Engl fans love”: Engl packs its iconic Fireball head into a compact dual-channel stompbox with onboard noise gate and IR support
