Eastwood Guitars has started shipping the new Doral Electric Jazz guitar. This beautiful guitar takes over top position at the high-end of the Eastwood product line.
Eastwood Doral Electric Jazz Guitar
The Eastwood Doral is a full size archtop guitar, featuring a laminated spruce top with curly maple sides and back as well as a three piece rock maple neck. Where the Doral separates itself from other archtops is the versatility of the coil tapped humbucking pickups that afford you the opportunity to switch between vintage voiced humbuckers and P90 voiced singled coil pickups. Joey Leone, Doral design team leader said, “As a professional player I’ve always dreamed of having two L5’s, the mid sixties humbucking model Wes Montgomery played, and the 50’s era L5 CES Scotty Moore played with Elvis. This guitar delivers both sounds.”
Another feature of the Doral is the longer scale length (25.5”), this feature affords the player the option to use lighter gauge strings and still get some nice string tension. “I have noticed that over the past 20 years jazz guitar players have moved away from the heavier strings in favor of lighter strings. This also deals with the issue of hand and finger fatigue, as well as the long term degeneration of the joints of the player’s hands” said Leone.
Eastwood Doral Electric Jazz Guitar
One other feature of the Eastwood Doral electric jazz guitar is the pickup spacing, the neck pickup is spaced slightly away from the neck an idea that was used on several Gibson one pickup models in the 50’s and 60’s, and on the sleeper of a guitar, the Ibanez Joe Pass Model from the 70’s. This gives the front pickup a bit more of a low mid voicing, a real plus on a spruce topped guitar which can be a bit muddy and have trouble cutting through a larger ensemble. The Doral replicates the natural acoustic sound of the guitar more accurately. The bridge pickup is moved slightly away from the bridge as well, this gives you a more useable sound as opposed to the “treble pickup” with no treble sound found on L5’s. Lastly, this gives you a slightly different sound when both pickups are employed, very similar to the sound many players love on the short scale Byrdland.
“Since the overwhelming success of the Joey Leone Signature models last year, we have been looking for other ways to introduce high-end models at mid-range prices,” said Mike Robinson, President and founder of Eastwood Guitars, “Many guitarists are accustomed to paying $3,000+ for a “quality” high-end guitar. We’ve found a way to deliver that guitar, at half the price and twice the features.”
For a great review of the Doral, check out Guitar International.
Very nice! I’ve always loved the L5. What finishes will this be available in?
Cool stuff, Mike! Can’t wait to try this one.
Hey Wendell, beautiful guitar- smooth demo. You look great by the way! Could they ‘mike’ the semi-acoustics and just hear them ‘as is’ in future demos?
Love it, could be my second Eastwood guitar 😉
Mike, there’s any chance to add a Bigsby?
Best regards from Chile,
Max
Beautiful guitar – well built and sounds awesome!
Nice looking guitar – I did a bit of custom wiring on my Peerless (AKA Gretsch White Falcon), except the pickup volume controls push/pull for series/parallel coils instead of shorting one coil for a single coil (P90) sound. Then I added a small switch to bypass the back coil (“P90”) mode on each pickup, adding even more colors to the tone, I also like the bridge pickup a bit back from the bridge – easy to do without surgery – just flip it so the screws are on the forward side of the pickup. (The single coil switch bypasses the rear coil of the bridge pup and the front coil of the neck pup)
A plywood top is OK, solid spruce is better – and can season into something wonderful, like my 1955 Synchromatic. This is a laminated top guitar and should not be more than $750, even with the pickup switching and pretty binding. A neck glued from three pieces is NOT a selling point. A one piece neck is sonically superior but more expensive to make, (but also a less efficient use of maple). Finally, the gleaming glasslike finish is beautiful, but a lighter coating lets the wood vibrate more freely and makes an instrument more acoustically responsive. OK for an electric, but guessing the unamplified tone will not be very warm. Imagine the sound of a fine French-polished classical guitar, and one painted with a heavy coat of orange lacquer.
Hi Wendell. Whatever she sounds, it’s good recording and the Guitar looks beautiful!
Hi, Mike!
The sound of Wes Montgomery and Scotty Moore? Thanks a lot!
Wow,this time you and your staff have really made a two for one guitar. Can’t wait to find a dealer in my area and give it a test drive myself.
Congrats are in order and Wendell your demo is awwwe-some. I know Scotty personally and while he hasn’t been feeling well,I’ll bet this would put a smile on his face. It did mine, for what ever that’s worth.
Jim Pasquale
This guitar reminds me of the Epiphone Swingster.
“This is a laminated top guitar and should not be more than $750”. I don’t have any comment on the Doral pricing, but there isn’t anything wrong with laminate tops, esp on electric archtops. It’s a lot more durable than a solid top. The Gibson ES-175 is laminated (approx $4K)…
three words that turn me to the next page:
Made in Korea
if selling used eastwood doral guitar please let me know , mine was stolen from storage unit during am hours, please let me know if there is used guitar for sale ok kevinpcal@hotmail.com