Takamine TC132SC Review

This Takamine TC132SC Review explains my impressions and experience from 2+ years of playing this guitar, why I chose it and what I did to fit it into my style. From one side, TC132SC is a classical nylon-string guitar with standard 2″-wide neck and neck and body joint on 12th fret. From the other side, it has all attributes of the modern guitar: cutaway and electronics. But let’s start from the question why I chose TC132SC.

TC132SC, TH-5C, TH-90

Here is what I looked for in a classical guitar: deep, warm and mellow sound for playing classical ‘nylon’ jazz and accompanying to the singers.I looked for the cedar top, and ‘dark’ back and sides – in general, they produce warmer sound (IMHO). I wanted a convenient classical 2″/52mm-wide neck, good playability, low action, and high end electronics. I looked for a guitar from a manufacturer with good reputation. I even bough a guitar from another Japanese manufacturer but didn’t like it and return it. Takamine’s Palathetic pickup and CoolTube CTP2 preamp made the difference.

I liked reviews of Takamine guitars on YouTube and informal reviews on the forums. Three classical Takamine models TC132SC, TH-5C, and TH-90 looked good for me. TH-90 was out of my price range, so I focused on the first two.

TC-132SC has solid cedar top, solid rosewood back, and laminated rosewood sides. The key difference of TH-5C was solid rosewood sides. Retail prices on TH-5C were about $400 higher. I talked to an owner of both guitars, a professional flamenco player, how significant is the difference in sound. He replied that he didn’t hear any difference in sound between them. I didn’t care too much about the exterior, and went with less expensive model.

Local music shops in my area didn’t have any TC132SC in stock, so I couldn’t try it. I talked to a few Tak owners at Acoustic Guitar Forum. All of them were very positive about their experience. So, I liked how it sounded, I liked the feature set, the most of the formal and informal reviews were positive. It was a Christmas sales season, and I bought it new online with a good discount.

First Impressions

Right after unpacking it, my first impressions were … well, they were “mixed”. Guitar’s playability was great, action was almost right (low enough for me), but it didn’t sound as I expected. Not rich, not warm, not deep. Duck will be the right word to describe the sound after I tried this guitar right out of the box. Note that it was winter time, and TC132SC was shipped to me from opposite side of the country.

However, I’ve seen cases like that with new guitars before, and I was prepared. I installed my favorite high-tension  strings, inserted a Planet Waves guitar humidifier to compensate for the winter’s low RH, let it settle down for one day and postponed all further tests until later.  And the next day it sounded acoustically … just as I expected! It sounded much richer, brigh and deep enough. I like to hear a balance between the punchy sound of the high strings and solid mellow bass line – and I heard it at that day and thereafter.

Guitar Setup: Rounds #1 and #2

I wanted to tweak the setup a bit, so I brought it to a guitar tech and asked for a few things:

• lower the action (sand down a saddle just a bit)
• add two extra side dots at 15th and 17th frets
• add a strap button
• polish the edges of the nut – they were too sharp

It took two rounds for guitar tech to make it right. I wasn’t very satisfied how action was setup – the low strings still buzzed. At that time those issues weren’t critical for me, and having two concert rehearsals per week, I decided to put any gear improvements on hold for a while.

I played this guitar a lot for the next several months, and got many compliments from the listeners. With my friends, we did a small house concert as vocal, bass and guitar trio. It went very well, and I played both via pickup/preamp and via an external dynamic microphone. I was fully satisfied with the results but …. wanted to try one more thing to make sure it’s not just a good guitar, but an exceptional guitar.

Round #3. To PLEK or not to PLEK

Several months later, I’ve got time and money to take the next significant step. I think most TC132SC owners won’t need to do that, but my perfectionism didn’t let me to ignore it anymore.I wanted to do two extra things with my Tak:

• Further improve playability
• Add an internal microphone

To address the first thing, I decided to run my guitar through the PLEK service. You can find more information about PLEK on this site. Shortly speaking, PLEK is a computerized machine that does high precision guitar fretting job.

Muke Lull’s guitar shop in Bellevue, WA has a PLEK machine. Actually, I already tested it with my gypsy jazz Saga Gitane D500 guitar a few years before and was very impressed by the results. It improved the guitar’s playability significantly. So, I went there for the second time and asked Mike to PLEK my TC132SC.

PLEK did a VERY, VERY good job on frets leveling, crowning, and polishing. My fingers literally can fly over the fretboard and I am more than happy with that!

Takamine TC132SC Review. A year later

One year later, I am still a very satisfied player of TC132SC.  In addition to the improvements described above, I shaved a little bit more off the saddle, got the excellent playability and some light string buzz. What I want to do next is to order a couple more bridges adding 1mm and 2mm to the action. Probably I’ll do this later this year.

Here is my clip on YouTube where I play a Russian Christmas Song. You can hear how my guitar sounds (after a couple of minor tweaks in DAW)

I also tested different strings and settled down on one particular kind – Savarez 540CJ high-tension strings.

I found that my TC132SC has GOTOH 1:14 tuners 35G420. They work well, and I lubricated them recently to make the tuning process smooth.

Takamine TC132SC Review. Two years later.

Two year later, I have nothing to complain about. I play for TC132SC and TF740FS in 50/50 proportion, both plugged in and non-amplified, and am still a very satisfied player. I didn’t do anything else with the guitar, even didn’t touch the action, but still feel that I need to raise it just a little bit. Will see how it goes

Conclusion

My friends asked me “Why Takamine? Why not Taylor, Why not Cordoba, why not Ramirez or something else?”. My answer was “Because of good acoustic sound, quality, playability, Cool Tube and a good price”.  I experimented with external EQ and preamp (D-TAR Equinix and Solstice) and was able to find “my” sound both acoustically and through electronics.

I should also admit that I am not the most rational guitar buyer in the world. Resale value of a guitar with laminated sides (even with the solid top) is not very good. But I don’t change guitars every year, this one should work for me at least for 4-5 years, and who knows what happens then. I am glad I bought it, PLEKed it, and I like playing it very much.

Related Information

• Takamine TC132SC on takamine.com
• Takamine TF740FS on takamine.com
• Takamine Forum
• Acoustic Guitar Forum
• PLEK USA site
• Web page on Mike Lull’s site about PLEK