John Williams: Blog

The Rainsong WS1000 is a great gigging guitar.  It is durable, sounds good, and is impervious to most environmental problems but a list price of over $2000 makes it a bit hard to justify.  The new "advanced" model has most of those qualities but comes in at about half the price.  They also can be had in red or blue in addition to black.

A new piece of gear always seems to turn up in Musicians Friend's "scratch and dent" just when I think I need it.  They had a black AWS1000 for just under $1k so I hopped on it.  The advanced model comes with a gig bag where the non-advanced (retarded?) model comes with a nice SKB-like case.  No problem there - I like gig bags anyway and the one that is included is very high-quality.  It also comes with Fishman Prefix Plus-T electronics which includes a tuner.  That's very cool since I had to add a Wittman-Spins mini tuner to my older Rainsong.

Out of the box the action was not as low as I like so I started in on adjusting it right away.  Turns out the truss rod adjustment (there is no truss rod on the non-advanced models) works opposite every other guitar I've ever worked on.  Clockwise (tightening) causes the neck to bow and the action to get higher.  Counterclockwise (loosening) causes the neck to straighten out and the action to get lower.  This isn't in any documentation - actually, that would be pretty hard as there is really no documentation.  Once I figured that out, by experimentation, I was able to make the action wonderful.

The neck is quite thin (front to back) but it is still pretty comfortable.  The width is fine.  Acoustic tone is quite good, close to as good as the original model, and the electric tone is comparable as well.  The built in tuner is a nice touch.  It mutes the electric signal when in use and can also be used when nothing is plugged into the output jack.

The body finish is solid black - you can't see any of the fibers as with a clear finish.  This probably means that, since the fibers aren't on display, they don't have to be laid up quite as neatly as the higher end model and therefore saves cost.  The fibers are visible on the neck and seem to be as neat as possible.  The body material is also a bit thicker which would contribute to Rainsong's durability claim.  Can't really tell about the durability but it is a bit heavier.  All in all it sounds plenty good enough to play out with and I would not hesitate to record a CD with it either.

The guitar came on a Thursday and I played at the Art & Soul coffee house/pottery studio in Gig Harbor (Washington) with it on Saturday.  I keep a sailboat  in Tacoma and it is about an hour sail from Tacoma to Gig Harbor so I decided to sail over on Saturday, play Saturday night, stay the night on the boat, and sail back on Sunday.  In the early Fall the weather is still pretty nice up here but this is the perfect trial for a "weatherproof" guitar!

The gig went well (though the crowd was very small) and the guitar, through a Crate Taxi , sounded great.  I didn't get dock space so I had to use the dinghy to get back and forth to the boat.  When I returned to the boat I forgot and left the guitar in the cockpit for several hours.  It was in the 50s, very damp out, and the guitar was in a gig bag sitting out in the open.  When I remembered it I brought it into the cabin, took it out of the gig bag, and, of course, it was still in perfect tune.

Then, to top off the stupidity, I put it back into the gig bag and inadvertantly set it in front of a heater vent.  This was a very cold guitar suddenly getting warmed up to the point where it was uncomfortable to touch the outside of the gig bag.  Once again, I took it out, had a look, and it was still in perfect tune.  After this abuse I put it safely away in an unused bunk.  If this doesn't define what this guitar is good for I don't know what does.