Question About Sand Guitars

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Question About Sand Guitars

Postby Skip Ellis » Sat Jun 22, 2019 4:45 pm

Been thinking of selling off a few things and purchasing a Kirk Sand guitar as my 'forever' now that I'm older, don't play out much any more, and don't need all the electric and high end steel strings in my stable. I've always thought of the Sand guitars as being perfect for fingerstyle/Chet/Jerry/etc. but I'm hesitant for one reason; the set in neck. Is it it possible to get the action down really low on these guitars much like you can on the Godin with it's bolt on design? I used to own a CEC and the action on it could go down all the way to the frets if you wanted. One of my pet peeves with instrument builders is having too shallow a neck angle to allow really low action. Any thoughts?
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Re: Question About Sand Guitars

Postby srgntschultz » Sun Jun 23, 2019 8:27 pm

Hi Skip, I have 2 Sand Nylon guitars and they are both the best I have and I love to play them. The action is very very low and no buzzing and it can go lower. I have it set just the way Kirk sent it to me and its perfect all the way up the neck. I also have a Gibson Chet Studio and they are basically all the same as far as the playability, but I have them all set up the same way. So no worries on the action on Kirks guitars. There is a good selection on reverb.com I know Kirk is pretty well back ordered currently. They also sound great unplugged also, so its a win/win.
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Re: Question About Sand Guitars

Postby DickThomas » Wed Jul 31, 2019 1:29 pm

The action on my Sand is fairly low. I expect that, as a builder, Kirk could build an instrument with an action as low as you want. Mine has a slightly shorter scale length, which I really like. I have had mine for almost 15 years, no problems.

Dick
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Re: Question About Sand Guitars

Postby DagerRande » Thu Aug 01, 2019 9:01 pm

I once lived within 100 miles of Kirk's shop and he began building one for me in 1994. I used to visit him on a regular basis and it felt like I was watching a developing fetus. He used to send me details of the progress, which was 11 months to completion. Mine was one of his final batch in his old place before he moved to the new shop. It seemed like he told me that he used to work on 12 at a time and that doubled once he moved. Mine was gorgeous and had a very low action and perfect neck width for my relatively large hands. I almost didn't need to warm up whenever I picked it up! The tragedy was that I, unfortunately, had to sell it in 2006 for financial reasons. It's like I lost a dear family member! There isn't a day that goes by where I don't dream about having another one!

As a matter of fact, I attended CAAS this year with the intention of making arrangements for him to build be another one. Unfortunately, Kirk had knee surgery just prior to this and, for the first time in over 30 years, he wasn't able to attend. I'm hoping the best for him and am working on getting that process going so that I might be able to pick it up next summer!
Rande Dager

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