Until recently, I’ve almost completely forgotten about my New Guitar post which actually has already arrived and I’ve been using for the past few months. The AR11C/ACE from Baton Rouge arrived mid-June instead of March due to shipping issues, but I’ll still be writing about what I think of the guitar.
Previously I’d been using an El Degas guitar which is a company that makes Gibson replicas. It was a guitar my aunt had that she wasn’t using. I changed the strings with a set that she gave me with the guitar, but they still felt rusty and awkward. When I first used the AR11C/ACE the first thing I noticed was how much more comfortable it felt compared to the glossy finish of the El Degas guitar. The AR11C/ACE has a more natural finish and isn’t as sticky when you hold it. This makes the body feel better as well as makes it easier for me to move my hand up and down the neck.
The next thing I’d noticed were the Elixir strings. Almost all of Elixir’s strings have some sort of coating on them that is supposed to change the way they feel depending on the coating you get. When the guitar came it didn’t specify the coating. All I knew was that they felt really nice to play with and my fingers didn’t get stuck on them. When it came time to change strings I went to their website and found that the Polyweb coating best described what I felt with the strings when they first arrived. I decided to go with the 80/20 Bronze, Light/Medium Polyweb strings. They felt pretty much the same as when the guitar first came and I’ve really been enjoying them. I plan on staying with those strings for a while unless I have money to start experimenting with new strings.
The last most notable thing on the guitar for me was the BR-2P pickup system. The AR11C/ACE was my first time using an acoustic guitar that had a pickup system. A pickup system is basically a microphone inside the guitar that you can connect to an amplifier if you’d like. For me, the pickup is sometimes useful when I feel like plugging in or just being louder, but I think the most convenient thing for me is the tuner on the BR-2P. With a push of a button on the side of the guitar, it switches to tuner mode and it lets you know if a string is too “high” or “low”. What I find nice, is that it’s not restricted to the standard EADGBE so it can use open tunings as well. The reason why this is convenient is because sometimes I don’t really feel like pulling out the Fender Tuner on my phone. Sometimes I just want to quickly retune so I can play right away.
Overall, I think that the Baton Rouge AR11C/ACE is a great guitar and with the right strings can sound really good. I’d like to assume that the rest of the Baton Rouge guitars are also of the same quality, but since I’ve never tried any others I can’t say.