Slim Pickin'

Two contrasting models from Takamine’s new Thinline range tell tales of superb player comfort and excellent onstage performance. Let’s see how they measure up…

- David Mea

The idea of thinline acoustic guitars is hardly new. In fact, when we first opened the cases and saw this pair of super-slender Takamines we were reminded of Yamaha’s excellent APX range from a few years back. Only these are even thinner. Takamine proclaims that the concept here is to provide “comfort and performance to guitarists seeking a more slender body, uncompromised sound, and excellence on stage”. Sounds like a good idea to us. After all, not everyone wants to wrestle with a jumbo or a dreadnought on stage. Guitarists who are predominantly Strat or Les Paul inclined might want something that feels a little more familiar in their hands for the one or two acoustic numbers in their band’s set, for instance.

Our two models here, drawn from an extensive range of varying timber combos and hues, might look extremely similar, but the real interest lies in where they differ. For a start, the TSP178AC SBB (which we’ll call ‘The Blue One’ to avoid confusion) is £800 more expensive than the TSP138C TBS (aka ‘The Sunburst One’) and sports an arched maple top and back. So, are we looking at a cross between a full acoustic and something like a Gibson ES-3 series here? We’d better zoom in and get busy…

Your first question might be, ‘Just how thin are these guitars?’ The Sunburst is a very trim 60mm, but the Blue is the real supermodel at only 50mm – but, of course, we have to take into account that it bellies out owing to the arched top and back. Both are particularly light, too, checking in at only 1.9kg (4.4lb), but from here on in, the spec begins to differ even more.