Anyone tried these reissue Kalamazoo guitars?
 

On Reverb I’ve stumbled across these inexpensive Kalamazoo tribute guitars that look like they could be decent for the money. Especially the Oriole. Adi top, maple body, apparently with nitro finish ?

I mean with those specs it seems like someone here would have tried one out ?

That Oriole looks like a real winner - BTW there's also a 1940 original on Reverb at ten times the price...

There's a youtube video of a guy who bought the KG-11 reissue and said the specs did not exactly line up.

tried to fix the video.

These look really cool, I'd be curious to hear them as well.

They looked really cheap guitars in the shape of a Kalamazoo.

A client of mine recently purchased one new on Reverb and it didn't play great. He brought it up to me and I advised him to return it if she could. Action was high, fret ends were sharp and the build quality suspect. Which now that I think about it, is just like the originals :)

Are they definitely nitro finished? The pictures look a lot like a typical Asian factory gloss poly.

The one I played did not seem to be nitro. I just looked up the specs and it simply says lacquer finish but does not specify what type of lacquer. I'll say that the finish didn't look bad and didn't seem to be super thick or anything.

I'm not sure it matters what the finish is. Nitro won't make the guitar sound better because of the nitro. There is junk made with Nitro, Poly... finishes. These appear to be the same quality as most offerings online from Alibaba with any-name-you-want on the headstock. One would likely spend what the guitar cost to make it playable. Maybe if they were $100 and you wanted a wall hanger or large ashtray.......

Let me see if I can fix the vid.... Dave, if you post the exactly name of the video along with the raw URL from the address bar above, I or someone else here should be able to fix it for you.

Take Care,
Scott Memmer

Yeah, there are good and bad poly finishes and that in itself wouldn't put me off a guitar. Cheaper nitro finishes rarely have that heavy gloss look, though. It just makes me wonder how close they come in to the quoted specs in that and other respects.

From the photo of the neck joint the gloss finish looks to be really thick , similar to my Recording Kings which are poly. I don't have anything against poly but when the description says nitrocellulose lacquer I take that to mean the real deal nitro, not polyurethane. But hey it's a $400 guitar. It's probably junk.

https://youtu.be/S8TLuOASD1I?si=slAQmUj3aBvJO6zA

Weird. The thing does not resemble any Kalamazoo model ever made.