Godin Guitars – 32 Hertz

Today I want to tell everyone about Godin Guitars. These Canadian made beauties are really nice guitars that sound great, and they have some really nice features that I think will help bring the electric guitar into the future. Features like synth. access and their High-Definition Revoicer system shows that the electric guitar can still evolve and still be an important part of making music, but they still have not forgotten how to make a great traditional guitar like the one seen in the very funny video below.

Godin 5th Avenue review

Godin Guitars use a lot of dense Canadian wood that is better for sustain and a brighter sound. Rock maple is used for many of the necks as well as basswood from the Laurentian forest for several of the bodies. Of course they also use all the standard woods you would expect as well to make sure that the guitar produces the best tones. They also use what is called “The Godin Ergocut shaping technique” that bevels the edges of the fingerboard and frets back in towards the center of the fingerboard to provide an extremely comfortable feel. These necks are fast, comfortable, thin, and fun to play.

Many Godin guitars come with what is called the Godin Tru-Loc Tremolo system. The Godin Tru-Loc Tremolo system gives players ability to adjust resting position of the tremolo bar (the bar itself not the bridge). Usually when screwing in the tremolo bar it stops at a less than ideal position forcing guitar players to loosen the bar up a little and let it swing. The Godin Tru-Loc Tremolo system allows you to set the position the bar rests at, so when not in use it remains just out of the way and easy to get to. This is something that I think all guitars with tremolo systems should already have.

Rene Bartoli: Romance on Godin Multiac Synth Access guitar with Roland VG-8

Another thing many of the Godin guitars come with are pickups that use a High-Definition Revoicer system. Godin claims that the High-Definition Revoicer system “augments and revoices the frequencies of each pickup, taking them to the next level of sonic clarity with a zero-hum, noiseless high-definition sound“. This is like having a second set of pickups built into your guitar that you can switch with the press of a button. The first set being a passive set and with the press of a button you get an active set with true bypass. A whole new set of tones instantly.

Godin XTSA Solid Body 3-Voice Electric Guitar (Light Burst)

Easily one of the most awesome things about Godin guitars is the synth. access. Several of the Godin guitars have been built from the ground up to work seamlessly with the Roland GR-1 guitar synth system. Though I have seen this kind of thing since I was a kid it was always very clunky and not very musical, but that is surely not the case here. Godin guitars use what is called a hexaphonic pickup (hexaphonic pickup means each string gets its own pickup and output) and preamp system along with some “fundamental changes to the guitar itself” to help the guitar “track” faster. “Tracking” “refers to the speed at which the synth is able to recognize the pitches being played and convert them into voltages“. This means lower latency between a note played and a note heard. These guitars are the only guitars that I know of that have been built from the ground up for this purpose and Godin guitars have mastered it, you really don’t notice any latency even in the fastest passages.

The hexaphonic pickup in the bridge of many of the Godin guitars are equipped with six custom saddle transducers along with an on-board pre-amp and 3-band graphic equalizer to get incredibly authentic acoustic guitar sounds. This is similar to the system in the Yamaha Silent Guitar.