# Test Drove Some Recording Kings



## Everton FC (Dec 15, 2016)

I'm down to one guitar, my '78 Yamaha FG-331. Looking for a second, as my son seems partial to the Yammie. Would love to find a more Gibson sound. Decided to check out the Recording King models here. So far I've tried the following;

Dirty Thirties 000 Deluxe - Solid Spruce Top/Solid Mahogany B&S/Fishman electronics.
My hand could not accept the flat C-shaped neck profile. Too flat. Wish it wasn't so - I liked everything else
Dirty Thirties 000 Series 7 (ROS-7) - All laminate. Spruce Top/"Wildwood" B&S.
Light as a feather. Easy to play w/12s. Boxy, but a good strummer. I liked this guitar better than the all solid 000 Deluxe. If only the 000 Deluxe had the ROS-&'s neck profile!
Dirty Thirties 000 Series 9 (ROS-9) - Solid Spruce Top/"Wildwood" B&S.
Again, light as a feather. Easy to play. 12's sound great on these 000s. Unfortunately, old dead strings took a lot of the Recording King sound away. I found myself in the middle when it came to the ROS-9 and the ROS-7. Something about the 7. Most would go for the 9
Dirty Thirties Dreadnought Series 7 (RDS-7) Same specs as the ROS-7. Dull strings didn't help the test drive. I wanted to like this guitar. I didn't hate it. Wish the string were fresh. The RDS-9/Solid Top was great - both extremely light-weight instruments.
Dirty Thirties 0 Lime Green Series 7 (RPS-7). Best build quality of the bunch. Seemed sold. Great little guitar. Lime green didn't even bother me!

Verdict: Overall, these guitars sound great. One thing I notices on all these - especially the 7 and 9 series guitars - was it appeared the fretboard sank a bit after the 14th fret. Everyone I looked at, regardless of guitar store (went to four) seemed to be the same. The action was noticeably higher after the 14th fret. The little lime green O-shape was the only exception - didn't have this issue. It's sad, because it really turned me off. I wanted to come home with ROS-9 or ROS-7. Totally different sounding instruments - amazing what solid spruce does to the 9-Series. But the issues described above kept me from pulling out my wallet. The line green O-body might be the best but, at CDN$125, but I wanted a 000.

Thanks for reading this rant! Any feedback/comments/et al are appreciated. Anyone experience the same w/these guitars? I will say they sounded better than the more expensive Walden I played, in the same setting.


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## mawmow (Nov 14, 2017)

Thanks for posting ! Really appreciated !


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## gretsch4me (Jun 2, 2018)

I'd be curious as to how a RO-318 would compare to a 000-18. Spec-wise the Recording King sounds like it should be a very decent sounding guitar in the same vein as the 000-18. Seems to be as rare as hen's teeth in this Covid environment though. Have no idea what they go for either...cheaper than a 000-18 by a lot I assume. I guess I could give Brickhouse or The Acoustic Room a call 'bout that. Still, I'd be interested to hear any 1st hand feedback on the RO-318...and yes I've seen YouTube vids on this model. Thx. 

Sent from my SM-A520W using Tapatalk


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## Everton FC (Dec 15, 2016)

gretsch4me said:


> I'd be curious as to how a RO-318 would compare to a 000-18. Spec-wise the Recording King sounds like it should be a very decent sounding guitar in the same vein as the 000-18. Seems to be as rare as hen's teeth in this Covid environment though. Have no idea what they go for either...cheaper than a 000-18 by a lot I assume. I guess I could give Brickhouse or The Acoustic Room a call 'bout that. Still, I'd be interested to hear any 1st hand feedback on the RO-318...and yes I've seen YouTube vids on this model. Thx.
> 
> Sent from my SM-A520W using Tapatalk


I think here in Canada, at least in Alberta, it's tough to find Recording King's anywhere. The first one I saw - and I would have purchased it - was a blue Century 33 - at a small music shop that caters to kids wanting lessons, here in Calgary. Not a guitar shop. Why it was there - "Who knows?!). But wow - incredible, woodsy tone. But the bridge was already lifting. I asked if she's sell it at discount. She said, "Nay", and I moved on. I may go there tomorrow and see if it's still a wall hanger. I'd buy it, it it was - it was that good, even w/the questionable build-quality... 

I did purchase the ROS-9. It's getting some fret-work, as the low-E buzz was too much for me. We'll see how she sounds tomorrow. But what a sound. You can dig into these tops, and they don't get muffled - at least to my ears. I am 50/50 strum/finger-picker, but when I strum, I strum on the side of Pete Townshend. This little 000, cheaply built, handled it all. It is a totally different vibe from my Yamaha, which is more deep, with more base, more "tenor", if that makes sense. 

These Recording Kings - if you can find the right one - are really cool guitars. Could be a "couch-guitar", could be your "beater"... Or, could be a guitar that you could, in my opinion, record an album with -adding a top-drawer pickup would make this an awesome beast! I will add here, the ROS-7 all-laminate is also a great bargain. Totally different sound and "vibe" from the solid-op sitka ROS-9 I went with, but if I found an ROS-7 used for the right price, I'd get it. 

Over and out!


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## mawmow (Nov 14, 2017)

When I bought my used 1995 Taylor 512 some years ago, the tech from southern Ontario had some on eBay as I remember.


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## nnieman (Jun 19, 2013)

I played a couple and I wasnt overly impressed with them.
They sounded good..... but not quite great.

My favorite acoustics (under 1500) were a small guild and a 12 fret tanglewood parlour.
Those two blew everything else away - including a gibson and a taylor.
I came home with the tanglewood.

Nathan


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## Steadfastly (Nov 14, 2008)

Until a few days ago, I wouldn't give Recording King guitars an ounce of my time. Then I watched this video from JP Cormier. For anyone that knows JP or have watched a number of his shows or videos, you've likely come to realize that he is a straight shooter, a professional musician and one heckuva guitar player. He recently reviewed the top of the line Recording Kings and compared the RD-328 to a Martin D28. So I listened. After this, I would personally look at purchasing an upper echelon Recording King except they are a little narrow for me at 1 11/16" at the nut. Otherwise, I may have one in my home. However, if that size fretboard is fine with you, take gander at the video.


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## Everton FC (Dec 15, 2016)

Recording King will always have the odd QA issues. But they have improved. The one I purchased is still getting some fret work done - Low E buzz. So this would be an issue w/me. There's another same model I can exchange it for - and I may. When they do not have the QA issues - for the $ they are a nice guitar. The sound is superb!


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## Eric Reesor (Jan 26, 2020)

I hear you, on the issue of a rounded neck profile on the Recording King 000 dirty thirties. A great deal depends on your style of playing. My guess is that it impedes a thumb chord technique too much for most people who are used to the practice of playing them. I started out playing finger style on a Yairi 000 after learning thumb chord techique on an electric and found that to learn a different technique and have independence of the left hand finger movement, wrapping the thumb around the neck to play bass notes on the 6th is going to certainly impede things a great deal. Then I started to learn the good old British blues standard, Anji by Davy Graham and found that if I used a more traditional finger style of "parlour guitar" technique along with a careful blues bending so as not to strain the hand the sound of a great little guitar like the old Yairi 000s really opened up. At the time I was using a thumb pick and "Chet" style technique not pure so called "classical technique".

Davy Graham was an exception: he, much like Paul Simon easily float back and forth between a dropped and high thumb stopping on narrow neck steel string. Anji (not the rolling bones song!) Is a great tune to improvise on fingerstyle and demands an extremely agile technique if you are going to make it sing the way it must. Simple changes but what you can do in them is fantastic if you have the ability to make the tune your own on a small body 12 fret instrument. Or on a dreadnought capo 3.
It is one of those tunes that is easy to play with good fingerstyle techniques but if you don't make it your own it can easily become a string breaker if you try to copy Davy Graham...
As I quickly learned using silk and steels to learn it with big string bends on a small body parlour guitar capo 3 back in the late 1960's. So I modified the riff to work without thumb chords on a wider profile neck and quickly found that it can yield real power on a 12 fret played up the neck without a capo!

That being said there is no way a hand builder can compete with factories that churn out guitars like they were shirts. In my opinion, the dirty thirties line are great guitars but unfortunately, much like the thousands of guitars built by other factories for the last 200 years, will suffer at the hands of players that don't care for their guitars. Or worse they then become attic items in houses like old top of the line Stella's, great banjos and countless other decent guitars, mandolins and other instruments have become. Now the guitars of my youth like the venerated FG 180 and many of the incredible solid top "lawsuit guitars" have mostly been either used as an El Kabong or worse used to heat a stove or roast marshmallows!

Also having the fret board not perfectly flat opens up a great deal of mid fret sound on a 12 fret instrument because it gives relief to the strings to have a little more vertical vibration room thus allowing for more powerful thumb rest stroke techniques. It is a compromise because the guitar then is not great at solo work above the neck joint to the body. Quite a few nylon string builders give relief on the bass side above 14 but then give less slightly less relief on the treble side as can my brother when he builds 30s style or X braced "parlour guitars". His neck profile is closer to a mid 30's Martin and has a little more diamond shape and a truss rod of course! Here is one he built a little while ago. It opens up in sound and gets louder when playing around the fourth fret to the 12th. Though not as powerful in the bass as bigger body guitars the powerful focused middle range more than make up for it in lead guitar work in a group.


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## Steadfastly (Nov 14, 2008)

I don't know if some of the lower end Recording King guitars are suspect on quality but you only get so much for $300.00. My estimation of this company has gone up considerable after watching these videos.


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