2008 Antonio Tsai (Vietnam-made) 000-Size Super-Inlaid Guitar

August 09, 2020

2008 Antonio Tsai (Vietnam-made) 000-Size Super-Inlaid Guitar

It's funny, but I've worked on five or six Antonio Tsai (Vietnam-made) instruments in the last few years. These are often found on eBay and almost all are gussied-up to the hilt in one way or another. The prices are cheap for the amount of handwork put into them (this is all hand-cut, hand-inlaid pearl, remarkably) and so folks who like bling and are on the gear-hunt can almost never resist them.

They're actually built pretty well as far as bracing/lightness goes, but the trip over to the States and subsequent "settling-in" to our much-drier climate usually cripples them as players in one way or another (necks bum-out warp-wise or twist-wise, they get cracked-up, bridges go bad, etc.) after a year or two. In the case of this guitar, its saddle needed to be lowered quite a bit, string ramps added to the bridge, and the frets needed a heavy-handed level/dress job plus a good setup to get it playing well. In addition, the truss rod ran out of adjustment and so to keep the neck straight I had to downgrade strings from 54w-12 gauges (where it sounded really good) to 50w-11 gauges where it sounds good, but not full throttle.

This particular instrument is like a 000-size take on a Martin D-100 and it's just brimming with pearl. It's perhaps the fanciest Tony Tsai guitar I've seen yet. I'm happy to report that it's playing as it should and the tone is quite nice -- full and smooth and with a lot of volume.

The owner of this guitar was thinking about selling it, but he took it home after playing it again post-fixing, so I think... "that's that."

Scale length: 25 1/2"

Nut width: 1 11/16"

String spacing at nut: 1 7/16"

String spacing at bridge: 2 3/16"

Body length: 19 1/4"

Lower bout width: 15 1/4"

Waist width: 9 3/8"

Upper bout width: 11 1/8"
Side depth at endpin: 4 1/2"

Top wood: solid spruce

Back & sides wood: solid rosewood

Bracing type: x-braced