a silky low-friction feel. The finish work on
the guitar is excellent, and from the binding edges to the inner walls of the f-holes, it
was nearly flawless. Most pressed laminate
guitars use 3-ply construction, yet for the
Uptown’s Canadian wild-cherry top and
back, Godin uses 5-ply laminate, claiming
this results in added sustain. The Uptown
is also available in transparent red with a
flame maple top.
The Godin humbuckers sit in mounting rings that rest on the guitar top,
which helps alleviate feedback created by
additional body cavities. Godin’s patented
Graph Tech TUSQ bridge is another cool
innovation—it’s pinned to the guitar top, so
intonation adjustments are made exclusively
through the Tune-o-matic-style saddles.
These saddles also feature low-friction rolling inserts that help minimize tuning issues
common to Bigsby vibrato systems. More
traditional archtop design elements include
a floating fretboard and vintage-sized frets
and vintage-looking, Kluson-style tuners.
For its size, the Uptown is light and
comfortable, and with its medium-thick
U neck profile and flattish 16" fretboard
radius, the guitar offers an acoustic-like
feel. The fretwork is excellent and though
the review model arrived with low action,
I experienced no buzzing anywhere on the
’board—just smooth slides and easy bends.
One of the joys of any hollowbody is
that you can get a feel for the guitar’s most
basic tone before you ever plug it in. With
the Godin, the first few unamplified strums
rang out with an unexpected low-end girth.
Densely voiced chords were still bright and
airy with good note separation, if not all
of the woody harmonic complexity you’d
hear from an archtop unencumbered by the
extra mass of a Bigsby and pickups.
The body’s thickness, which is a little less
girthy than, say, a Gibson ES- 175, seems
to translate to a little less thump, though
the bass notes had great natural warmth
and sustain. In general, the Godin’s acoustic
voice has the midrange bark you’d expect
from an archtop, but with a little extra bass
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warmth and slightly less bite and body in
the unwound strings. Keep in mind this is
an electric instrument strung with a .010
set, so in its stock configuration it won’t
keep up in terms of volume or tonal balance with acoustic archtops strung with
heavier wire. But for the solidbody or
semi-hollow player especially, the Uptown’s
volume and resonance create an immensely
satisfying experience.
Uptown Express Running through a Dean Markley CD60 set up for clean tones, the Uptown GT’s neck pickup sounded smooth. It didn’t take much adjusting to find an archetypal fat jazz solo tone. Chords had an almost hi-fi-like clar- ity, and the pickup provided a good balance between wound and unwound strings with excellent touch sensitivity and articulation. When playing walking bass lines, I found the Godin’s amplified response wasn’t
The Uptown maintains an authority and sustain
more akin to a Gibson ES-335 without totally
sacrificing a traditional archtop’s bass presence.
