The Delta Snake Review: Musical Gear Review & Article Archive: Review: Epiphone Chet Atkins CE Nylon String

Review: Epiphone Chet Atkins CE Nylon String

The Epiphone Chet Atkins CE was an attempt by Chet to create a low-cost version of the very successful Gibson versions of both a solid steel and nylon string guitar using only piezo pickups in the bridge. I say it was an attempt by him, as it was a stated goal of his to do so and he pushed Epiphone to create such a guitar.

The early nylon string versions had some teething pains, with a high rate of failure in the piezo system created for this guitar. This was exacerbated by a shortage of replacement pickups from Korea, with a backlog often lasting months.

My guitar piezo system failed during the setup process by my local guitar tech, and it took about four weeks to get replacements, and as luck would have it, it was a bad batch. A complaint to Epiphone did speed up things and the guitar was in my hands two weeks later, along with a free T-Shirt.

Like any piezo pickup, the acoustic sound of the guitar was virtually irrelevant, which was good, as the heavy mohogany body produced almost no sound. It was very much an electric animal. When it worked, the results were excellent. The sound coming out of the amp (or headphones) was remarkably natural sounding, and one could play at any volume without feedback and it was tough to distort the sound (at clean setting).

The guitar itself was thin, albeit pretty hefty, and in particular, it was neck heavy like an old SG. The neck was very playable, though, and one could lower the action to an extent unheard of with a regular classical. The overall look of the guitar from the front was that of a traditional classical, with an unfortunately very fake-looking hole offset by some very pretty and effective tuners.

Surprisingly enough, it wasn't one-dimensional. With a little adjustment of the tone knob or use of effects, the guitar was capable of a wide variety of tones. In particular, I liked using it with a lot of reverb, and a bit of chorus.

Also, due to the fast neck, nylon-string jazz and world music style playing was especially easy and given the popularity of such guitars now, the CE could have sold much better now than it did in it's heyday in the 90's. Artists like Willie Nelson loved the Gibson version back then and bought several, so the basic design wasn't the problem.

The price wasn't either. The Epi version was in the 350.00-400.00 range, and mine was priced even lower. I guess one could find a lot of reasons why this or that guitar doesn't catch on. In my case, it was simply too neck heavy, the piezo system was cantankerous and sometimes got noisy, and most of all, it basically had no acoustic sound. You always needed an amp unless the house was dead quiet.

Nylon string guitars aren't played acoustically for just riffing around like one would do with a Les Paul for example. Players who choose classical guitars want to hear that translucent bell-like tone that only this type of instrument can produce.

So, in the end, The CE left my guitar collection, and an electric-acoustic took its place. However, to this day, in an age where nylon string guitars are being played almost as fast as jazz boxes, I sometimes wonder if I gave up on the thing a bit too soon. It's a guitar that can still be found here and there, and the used price is often quite good. I've seen it as low as 225.00 on Craiglist. By now, I figure the ones that had the pickup problems are gone, and the ones being sold work just fine.

At its price point, and capabilities, and given current music trends, one would have to say that Chet was on to something. It was just ten years too early.

- Al Handa

2006

Note: This review first appeared on the ePinions.com site in 2006. This and other reviews were short takes that accompanied the link to a business that sold the guitar. As a rule, the guitar had to be at least examined and played by the reviewer (and ideally owned). In my case, a severe case of GAS made it possible to have at least owned the reviewed instrument for a short while. I'm reprinting these as having another source on a guitar never hurts, even if the reviews aren't definitive. Other than minor corrections, these short takes are unchanged from the original text. I figure that it might be helpful to keep the older perspective.

The Quitturz by Al Handa