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Pros:
- Affordable
- Beginner Friendly
- Variety of Tonewoods
Cons:
- Buzzing Strings
- Unstable Tuning
The affordable guitar is a marvelous thing. It allows beginners to enter the world of acoustic music without having to be intimidated by expensive-sounding or looking instruments. The more adept find the affordable guitar to be a good practice guitar, one on which they can spend hours playing, months traveling with, without the fear of irreparably damaging the guitar ever being a thing. The Dean FLY MAH Flight Series ¾ size guitar is one of these cheap guitars. Let us take a closer look and figure out whether it’s the right one for you.
Body Quality
The ¾ sized body of the guitar is a design that goes after the power of the dreadnought, without the bulk or weight of the dreadnought. The success of the guitar at being on the same level as dreadnought in terms of power is of course questionable, but there is no doubt it produces a strong sound regardless.
The guitar is available in several types of tonewood combinations. There are models with laminated mahogany tops, more adept at emphasizing the bass tones. There are also spruce top models which are more biased towards the high and mid-tones of the guitar. Finally, the one most often found is the Bubinga topwood model. Bubinga is also often referred to as African Rosewood for its similarity to the wood both in look and sound. The sound of this guitar is bound to be more bass-heavy than with the spruce or mahogany topped models. The back and sides of the guitar are laminated mahogany, which is a sturdy enough hardwood, but will not be adding anything to the actual sound of the guitar because of the laminate.
The neck is made of laminated mahogany once more. This makes the guitar very sturdy and prone to lasting for a long time. The neck is slender and lightweight. Topped with the smooth and handsome rosewood fretboard, the guitar is a pleasure to hold and behold.
Hardware
The bridge of the guitar is rosewood across the models. While the guitar does not need much more bass enhancement, this does provide increased nuance to the guitar’s low tones.
The nut and saddle are plastic. While many don’t have a problem with synthetic material, I find it to be not as sturdy or well sounding as natural materials or the more expensive synthetics. The guitar has an adequate level of harmonics, yet the guitar has a problem with buzzing strings if played too hard.
The tuning machine is a chrome die-cast. It is not the most stable machine either, so expect to have to retune your guitar every once in a while.
Dean FLY MAH Sound
The guitar sound very adequate when you realize how affordable it is. The mahogany and Bubinga top models have an identifiable bias towards the lower tones, which are expressed very well by the guitar. The mid and high tones on these versions are not the most detailed, yet they retain a nice level of pleasantness to them. The spruce top is more balanced in the sense of tones, with all of them being expressed on the same level. I myself prefer the bubinga top guitar for the character that the tonewood brings to the bass tones of the guitar. A warm, dark sound filled my cold, black heart.
Conclusion
The guitar is a nice, affordable option for any beginner to study on. Professionals will find the guitar’s abilities lacking though. The variety of options in terms of tonewood used in the construction of the guitar is a nice customization option that allows the player to pick their sound from the very beginning. Overall, a good guitar for beginners that I would recommend to anyone without shame.
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