Customer’s Mackenzie Marr guitar

*Edited October 21, 2023

I am currently working on a customer guitar – a Mackenzie Marr Opeongo – OO sized guitar. The company is based in Quebec but their guitars are made in China. There aren’t any options per model besides the addition of an L.R. Baggs pick up. This guitar has good (loud) sound for a small bodied guitar and visually is not bad at all.

Their website says that the guitars and handcrafted so I decided to take a look carefully since I’m new to being a luthier and I have a tendency to really look at acoustic guitars a lot more in detail now since I’ve started this business.

The first thing my customer asked me was if the bridge was lifting out. It is hard to get a picture of this but if you saw the bridge yourself, you would see that it is not flush on both ends. Almost as if the ends were lifting. I’ve experienced this with my own personal guitar builds and this is probably just that the soundboard is radiused (has a curve) and the bridge is flat on the bottom and it does look like it would be lifting off from the guitar.

The bridge itself is visually appealing not having the standard bridge design – standard grade wood but not a big deal. The saddle is too thin for the saddle slot – 0.3mm too thin which is thin enough to be leaning forward with the string tension – which is not acceptable. Also the saddle is a little high which makes the strings just a touch high at the 12th fret.

The holes for the bridge pins were reamed too large for the pins themselves. Either that or they decided to use bridge pins that were too narrow for the holes. Bridge pins do come in different sizes but there still is a “standard size” for them.

I took a light and a mirror and looked inside the guitar. I wasn’t pleased what was underneath: glue not cleaned up. It’s a mixture of wood glue (which is yellow) and hot glue gun (clear) which is supposedly a newer practice in the guitar manufacturing process (from what I was told). Wood glue suggest a full 24 hour cure time as for hot glue gun…just wait until it cools. I have a Takamine guitar which you can see leftover glue from the hot glue gun used to put the braces on. But it’s definitely much cleaner than what this guitar looks like.

The smaller braces are called fan braces – those are the ones that have the hot glue gun and the longer braces (transverse braces) have the wood glue on it. As a guitar builder myself, I will admit that it is very hard to clean up glue. Even if you wiped the glue right away, there will be a discolouration because of what is left. Those big globs of glue should have been chiseled to make it look cleaner. Plus it’s unneeded weight on the overall guitar.

On the Opeongo page of their website, it says the back and sides are “African Mahogany (Kaya Ivorensis)” – which I know to be and list as “Khaya African Mahogany”. If you open their “specifications” on the same page, it says the back and sides are “Solid Indonesian Mahogany”. Don’t know what to tell you besides Africa and Indonesia aren’t in the same continent. Whatever it is, I can tell you that it is from the Mahogany species of lumber. The neck is also made from Mahogany.

The soundboard is of high grade Sitka Spruce – you can tell from looking at the straightness of the grains and the number of grains per inch on the board. It says 3A on their website but it could be even a 4A depending on which company grades it.

There is a herring bone rosette and trim just around the perimeter of the soundboard and the middle of the back. It’s not bad but I’m honestly not a fan of herring bone trim.

The guitar also comes with a hardshell case with the price – currently at $950CAD on their website. The case has a wine red interior is honestly well made. No loose padding or cloth or anything like that – common complaints from other cases made in China/sold on AliExpress.

In the end, I’d say this guitar is pretty good: high quality Sitka Spruce soundboard, Mahogany of some species for the body and neck, Rosewood fingerboard and bridge – it’s a good combination for a great sounding and loud guitar. And a lot of guitars nowadays don’t even come with a hardshell case – even at the $2000-$3000 range.

Would I say this guitar is handcrafted? With my limited experience at this point, I would point towards “no” than “yes”. Some of the things I see on this guitar point towards that this guitar was slapped together in an assembly line/station setup. If that isn’t the case, then whoever built this guitar – whether one individual or a number of individuals – isn’t putting the care into the fit and finish of the final product.

There is definitely more I can say about China stuff but it really comes down to this – quality control and inspection of the plant/manufacturer. I’ve seen stuff that would never pass inpection (in aerospace) and I’ve seen some stuff on the other end of the spectrum.

*update on this guitar – the customer contacted Mackenzie Marr and the guitar was shipped back to Mackenzie Marr for a bridge replacement. The guitar came back with a new bridge on, glue still on the surface of the soundboard around the new bridge, the string action height that was just high enough to clear the 12th fret (buzzed up and down the neck like crazy ) and not enough windings on the new strings that were put on.

The customer reached out to Mackenzie Marr again and in the end, they completely replaced the guitar.