Guitar, Concert QI

I have a La Patrie Collection and a La Patrie Concert. I have found that the La Patrie brand is an exceptional value with real beautiful woods, solid construction, and a sound that rivals higher end guitars...Even my Luthier agrees! I purchased a La Patrie Concert from Amazon. Everything came in great condition. The guitar was everything I had hoped. The mahogany wood gives the guitar an expected quick response with note clarity. The guitar felt very natural to me because I have been playing a La Patrie Collection guitar for the past year. The Collection guitar has a more mellow sound with great sustain. Both guitars have incredible sounds, but I think I prefer the Concert and the properties of the mahogany wood the best. The electronics are ok. I prefer playing without using the pickup, however; I do find it useful on open mic nights. The built-in tuner is a nice touch and it is very accurate. I can highly recommend this guitar for people who do not mind having a hybrid classical guitar as apposed to a traditional classical guitar. The truss rod and radius neck do help with playability. The electronics are an added touch; however, the guitar sounds great and projects well without being "plugged in". I would recommend using different strings because I did not care for the Godin strings that came standard with the guitar. I did have a luthier lower the action, adjust the truss rod, and replace the strings. So understand that purchasing this guitar may require a setup to achieve an easier or smoother playing guitar. I have had more expensive nylon string guitars. The La Patrie guitars I own rival or have richer sounds than other guitars I have owned or played(My Opinion using my ears!). I find myself reaching for it just about anytime I want to play - which is very often. I do not know how La Patrie (Godin) can make an all wood Cedar-Mahogany guitar for at least 1/3 the price of other guitar makers. I wont argue about their price because I benefit from an exceptional value! This guitar is great for beginning and intermediate classical students and all types of finger-style guitar players that like a nylon sound. Maybe I am just simple, but La Patrie is good enough for me. This is my guitar of choice.

I know maybe I shouldn't comment on a seller I didn't purchase from (I actually ordered one from this seller but got lost by UPS and they refunded my money), but since it's amazon (and not a lil company): I bought this guitar in Montreal, and there is no doubt it's beautiful and well crafted, the gloss is wonderful, the neck, action is really good. The bad thing starts when you actually play it. The sounds is pretty dead, its far from being rich. My $160 Yamaha has way better sound than this. And that's not all, once you plug it and make use of the electronics you realize it is way too 'bassy'. I often play live, and I've performed with at least ten different sound sets (amps + monitors + mixer + powers), and the result is the same, too bassy and also the volume/gain falls short compared to everybody else's guitars. When I bought it I knew the electronics had only bass + treble, and missed the 'medium', which most pickers do have. I thought 'well, the mixer will back it up', but it hasn't really. It just feels it's missing. The picker is not that actually bad, the sound quality is quite good but the bass is just too much. If they had calibrated it better, it would be a perfect picker, but they didn't. About the electronics, the battery bay is just too loose. It's not attached to the body of the guitar, so you get the bay hanging from a really thin cable. If you are not 100% careful you will get the cable ripped apart . From all crappy guitars I have had, all batter bays are really safe, you just drop the battery and close the lid, while this picker you have to pull the bay and attach the battery pins to the bay. It feels cheap and fragile. Also when playing unplugged, on some bassy notes, the battery bay starts shaking (reverberating) and starts making a buzz noise that is quite annoying. The battery bay shakes inside its tray. I was happy to pay $580 for it, because I wanted to be able to play a guitar while unplugged, something that I could play in a room among friends, but the sound is just too low/quiet/dead. I've bought various string sets and none of them seems to fix this dead sound. They say the Collection has a crispier/louder sound, but I already paid almost $600, that should be enough to get a great guitar and not one for decorating the living room. Plain simple, I paid $600 and it sounds way inferior than my: $160 Yamaha C40. (no picker) $200 Yamaha G-35II (no picker) $250 Ibanez. (with picker). If you are going to buy this, make sure you tried it beforehand, and also tried some other guitars. I'd trade this coffin if I could recover some of my $600, but I do not have heart to sell it to someone else for more than $200.