The Yulong Guo Ziricote Concert Guitar is truly a wonderful Double -Top Classical Guitar and has its own uniqueness when compared to the Yulong Guo Chamber Concert. It’s manufactured by the well-known Aiersi Guitars in collaboration with the world famous acclaimed Chinese luthier, Yulong Guo and under his supervision. Yulong Guo has over 40 years of experience and in 2018 was awarded the 2nd prize at the Granada guitar building competition.
The soundboard is a double-top construction with thin layers either of Spruce-Normex-Spruce or Cedar-Normex-Cedar or Spruce-Normex-Cedar and made with the finest choice of master grade tone woods. A double-top provides a higher amount of stiffness and strength to the soundboard that is needed in order to make a guitar responsive but with lighter weight compared to the weight of a traditionally made guitar and can therefore be braced relatively lightly which increases the resonance and a nice creamy or silky sound.
Some of the features that stand out about this guitar are the double layered solid woods that consist of solid Ziricote inner lined with solid Maple and with a slight arched back but without the back braces that adds to the volume and projection. In order to ease the playability in the higher treble register, the fretboard has an elevated design. The bridge of this guitar has its own unique design with scalloped sides to reduce weight. The bridge also has a 12-hole tie block that increases the break angle of the strings to the bridge which helps to improve the overall responsiveness of the guitar. The guitar also comes with a sound port (with cover) that acts as a personal monitor to the player.
The wonderful creamy tone is what stands out the most, having just the right levels of brightness-to-warmness in sound in the treble and the bass. Moreover, this guitar offers a loud projection and a great level of note separation with a quick response. It’s also easy to articulate fretted notes. Another factor that many take for granted is that it can be relatively forgiving to nail clicks whilst playing.
With regularly playing this guitar, it will open up and sound better as it ages gracefully. Moreover, the unique double-top combination of Spruce and Cedar makes this a very interesting choice.
Ziricote tonewood:- Found mainly in Mexico, Ziricote striking appearance is much like Brazilian Rosewood with “spider-webbing” but in shades of grays and olive greens with black rather than reds with black. It is heavier and denser than most rosewoods, however has tonal qualities closer to that of Brazilian Rosewood. Its basses are rich with sparkling trebles and a punchy sound.
Maple tonewood: is an excellent tonewood and has mid-low dampening properties. It produces a tone that has excellent clarity, brightness and strong fundamentals in the mid-range registers. This tonewood has excellent strength and therefore used for fretboards and back and sides.