A Review of the Cordoba F7

Andrew brought by his Cordoba F7 during lunch. He wanted me to see if I could fix a problem with his fret ends.

This was a great opportunity to evaluate this guitar so I took notes and wrote-up this review.


Cosmetic and finishing flaws devalue an otherwise good-sounding guitar
Andrew and I passed the F7 between ourselves and ran it through some test repertoire. We compared it to my Yamaha CG171SF and my Kenny Hill Estudio 45S (an Engelmann spruce-top) which is about the same as the Cordoba C7 in tone. I should mention that my CG171SF has a custom-carved bone saddle.

Tonally, the Cordoba F7 performed better than the Yamaha CG171SF and exhibited tonal characteristics that were closer to a flamenco guitar. The Cordoba had more powerful bass than the Yamaha CG171SF and had a perceptibly "drier" tone than my Kenny Hill Estudio 45S. That dryness was hard to perceive when I was playing the guitar but was very obvious when I was listening in front of the soundboard.

The guitar seemed to have the traditional structure of a basic flamenco guitar. From what I could observe and measure with my tools:

• The body depth was 1cm less than a classical guitar.
• The bridge was lower than a classical guitar.
• The neck seemed to have very little relief.
• The bracing was a light and basic fan design with no treble-side angled crossbrace as I've found in Cordoba's classical guitars in this series.
• The action at the nut was surprisingly low. When I depressed the strings at the 3rd fret, I found four of them to be resting solidly on the 1st fret. Despite this, I could not perceive any fret buzz when the strings were fretted at the 1st fret.
• The action at the 12th fret was a bit on the high side: 0.150 inches on the 6th string and 0.11 inches on the 1st string. The action can be lowered by shaving down the base of the saddle but I suspect that I would have to shim the nut a little to avoid buzzing at the 1st fret.
• The back and sides were laminated cypress. I have no idea what the core wood is. The laminate veneers that I've seen are so paper-thin that I cannot believe that they would impart any tonal color to a guitar. The core wood is what is most important.
• The nut and saddle were bone.
• There was a lightweight truss rod in the neck. No adjustment was needed for this guitar.
  

Overall, I felt that the tone of the F7 was right for its street price of about $500 (versus the competing Yamaha's street price of $360). However, there were issues with this model which we felt lowered its value.


"It's cutting my fingers!"
The biggest problem that Andrew had with the F7 was with how the fret ends were finished. He complained to me that they were cutting into his fingers.

At first, I thought that the problem was one that was easily remedied. On a number of Cordobas, I have seen poorly-finished fret-end beveling. The video below will illustrate to you the problem and how the ends can be smoothed with a specialty file. Advance to 0:57 minutes to get past the rather long opening.

As it turned out, the problem was more difficult to fix. The base edge of the beveled fret ends were sharp as shown in the drawing below and half of them were a little serrated. Although I could still file these bases, there was no way that I could do it without slightly damaging the polyurethane finish. Polyurethane is very hard to re-touch.




It's mainly for this reason that Andrew was planning on sending his F7 back for an exchange but there were other issues that he also had with the guitar.


Blemishes
Inside, the build of the Cordoba F7 was as clean as can be found in the Yamaha CG171SF. It was obvious that there was even a good amount of shaping that went into the bracing.

On the outside, there were a few cosmetic blemishes and signs of sloppiness.

• The back halves are not bookmatched (or are poorly bookmatched). This was surprising for Andrew but I had anticipated it after seeing photos of F7 that had been emailed to me by a couple of other owners. The left and right halves look like they came from completely different sets of wood.
• The bookmatched rosewood veneer on the headstock was off-center by 1cm. The seam was visible and could be felt with my fingertip.
  
• Tiny flecks of wood could be found in the finish.
• The rosewood fretboard seems to be minimally stained. I don't know if this is a flaw or if they wanted to give the F7 a more unfinished look. Cordoba's own website photos show a much darker fretboard.
  
• The spruce top of the Cordoba F7 is visually of a lower grade than the spruce tops of the Cordoba C7 (their classical model at the same price). The C7's have nice spruce tops which could be classed as AAA. The F7's top, with its variations and a dark grains falls somewhere between A and AA. Perhaps Cordoba was aiming for a rustic look as with the fretboard; but since the F7 costs as much as the C7, some buyers might take issue with this cosmetic difference.
• The golpeadors, or tap plates, had two spots on the edges where the glue did not adhere and you could slip a sheet of paper under them. They also have a "wavy" and uneven look to their surface when held at an angle to the light. By contrast, the tap plates on the Yamaha CG171SF are well-attached and look perfectly flat.
  
• The button screws of the economy Der Jung tuners (made in China) have sharp ends. You feel like you're going to cut yourself every time you tune the guitar. Two of the gears on the tuning machines were sticking. I would immediately replace these if I were to buy an F7.

Round Two?
Andrew is returning his F7 today so his replacement will probably arrive in a couple of weeks. He told me that he would bring it by so I'll have another one to evaluate. We'll see if the same problems can be found in the second unit.

He got his F7 for only $400 so he thinks that he might be able to accept the blemishes at that price (if there are less of them) in exchange for the tone. What's paramount is that his replacement model should not have problems with the fret-ends.