LAG Guitars Tramontane 70 T70D Natural akoestische westerngitaar

The guitar is physically beautiful and sounds wonderful, but there are some buts....

The action is horrendously high, about 5mm at the 12th fret and it's pretty high at the nut end too, which does not make for easy or fast playing.

The strings are way too heavy for me, at normal pitch they need a lot of effort to play, and so I detuned it to D from E for now, in order to make the tension less and the strings more responsive.

The fret ends are pretty good, and guitar is beautifully made - I have no complaints at all regarding it - and the sound is delicious, but it's going to need some setting up to really make it properly playable, and if I was a newbie I would probably not know how to do that and, if this was my first guitar, I might be put off playing it.

Luckily, with 25 other guitars in my herd, I know what to do, and then - with much lighter strings and a lower action, it's going to be a delight.

It smells nice, with a proper 'woody' smell, I've honestly never noticed that with a guitar before.

The craftsmanship and design are delightful, faultless really, and, as the medieval trobadors of the region are a major factor in my life - I play a wide variety of medieval instruments - I chose the guitar especially for the Occitan origin of the Lag company, and also for the fact that the coat of arms of the C12th Count Raymond V of Toulouse - the Occitan Cross - decoration is nicely applied by the sound hole; Count Raymond V being a little bit of a hero of mine.

Truly it is a very lovely guitar, and I look forward to recording with it, but I was a wee bit shocked by the set up, and to be honest expected a bit better... but I can fix that.