Godin 5th AvenUe Uptown Custom Havana Brown

first play
GODIN 5TH AVE UPTOWN CUSTOM HAVANA BROWN & A6 ULTRA DENIM BLUE FLAME
24
Guitarist november 2019
1. These unique-to-Godin
tuners offer different
ratios: 18:1 on the
bass side, and the very
fine-tuning 26:1 on
the trebles. Typical of
Godin’s unique detail
2. This roller saddle
tune-o-matic, along with
a well-cut Graph Tech
Tusq XL nut, ensures
that the Bigsby vibrato
is smooth in action and
stays in tune
2
1
If the licensed Bigsby hints at more of a
Gretsch style than a pure jazzbox, at least
the roller saddle tune-o-matic, which sits
on a Richlite foot, means this sometimes-
troublesome vibrato holds its tuning well
from the off. Richlite has received a mixed
response, but Godin has embraced it, not
least for its strength and, visually, it’s the
colour of the jet black ebony we used to
see that’s now increasing rare. The ’board
radius seems flatter than the Gibson
standard and the nicely installed small
fretwire adds an old-school feel.
While plenty of Godins feature modern
electronics, things are kept simple here
with just a master volume and tone for
the humbucker/dog-ear P-90 setup with
the selector switch shoulder-placed. The
output jack is side-placed directly onto the
wood and as usual the strap buttons are for
the Schaller strap locks. Overall, it’s a very
5th Avenue Uptown
If you’re into your rootsy alt-rock, blues
and jazz, you’ll probably have come across
Godin’s 5th Avenue range: relatively
affordable laminate archtops that also
provide a platform for more upmarket
versions. Various models have come and
gone since 2008. The current six-strong
range starts with the non-cutaway Kingpin
P90 with a single coil at the neck, the CW
Kingpin II adds a cutaway and either dual
dog-ear single coils or dual humbuckers,
while the three new 2019 models include
our review model Uptown Custom, plus
the cutaway Uptown T-Armond and
non-cutaway Nightclub Indigo Blue.
All use the same 408mm (16-inch) wide
body, 76mm (three inches) at the rim,
all-laminate construction from Canadian
wild cherry (the top is reinforced with two
longitudinal braces), which looks far from
showy here courtesy of the Havana Brown
finish. There’s an attractive figure to the back
and sides, less so the top, which looks like
a wide-grained mahogany. It’s all offset by
very clean white edge binding to the body,
although both the headstock and fingerboard
are unbound. It uses a more acoustic-like
scale length of 631mm (24.84 inches), slightly
longer than the classic Gibson scale, and
as with previous 5th Avenues, the neck sits
quite high from the body.
tidy piece let down by a little rub-through
to the dark brown finish on the rear edges
of the headstock – hardly a deal breaker.
A6 Ultra Denim Blue Flame
As an evolution of Godin’s original
solidbody-sized electro-acoustic
Acousticaster that put Godin on the map
back in 1988, our A6 is designed for higher
volume use, but still has a chambered body.
When the Ultra version first appeared in
2007, it added a neck humbucker creating a
dual-voice acoustic/electric ‘hybrid’.
Its enlarged Tele-esque outline is thicker
in depth at just under 49mm and, again,
is crisply bound on the top edge only. The
rear edges are quite comfortably radius’d
for seated playing and, although it’s a
bolt-on, the heel is lightly chamfered to
reduce bulk. The subtly flamed top under
the dark blue translucent finish certainly
adds a little bling, but there’s a very
workingman-like feel here, in a good way.
Once again, mahogany is chosen for the
neck with a natural satin finish and topped
with a Richlite ’board that has offset small
dot inlays. Here it has a glossier finish that
looks less ebony-like than the Uptown.
Frets, too, shoot for a larger medium-
jumbo size. Graph Tech’s Tusq is used for
nuts and saddles on many Godin electrics
and acoustics; the saddle here is accurately
The 5th Avenue
fi ts perfectly within
the Godin range:
a contemporary
hollowbody ‘jazzbox’
of some potency
GIT452.rev_godin.indd 24 02/10/2019 22:54