Ozark 3515E Cutaway Electro-Resonator

My only experience of Ozark hitherto has been with their excellent range of banjos so that was a good enough recommendation to take a risk with an Ozark guitar. My wife bought me this for my birthday and I am very very impressed. I intend to use it almost solely for slide but first of all, as an acoustic guitar it is perfectly in tune. I have much more expensive acoustic guitars that are no better - well it's hard to be better than perfectly in tune. By 'in tune', I mean that it intonates extremely well right up the fretboard and is bang on one octave at the twelfth fret, all six strings. Even right up the cut-away it's still spot on. The action is very easy straight out of the box so it's basically tune up and off you go, you have a very easy guitar to play. It's got an easy-access truss rod in the usual place under a plate behind the nut but strangely, it didn't come with a truss rod key - you'll need to go to the hardware shop for an allen key if you want to play with the action - but you won't.Technically, the machinery and furniture are of very high quality: easy, low-geared tuners, smooth frets, and a beautiful finish all round. The tone is a nice round, rather than tinny Dobro twang - loads of depth - and it's satisfactorily loud if you want to play it like that. The neck has a very comfortable profile and the fretboard likewise so that no matter how you position your hand and fingers you're never really aware of the profile - which is ideal, you don't need to be thinking about comfort when you're playing. I use a thumb wrap-around onto the bass E string quite a lot and I don't have big hands and that too is very easy and comfortable.The piece de resistance has got to be the lipstick pickup. For a single pickup, the tone right cross the range out of this thing is astonishing: well-matched tone from bass to treble. A small criticism might be that the pots could offer more tonal adjustment but you can handle that elsewhere in your set-up: at the amp or at your feet.As I said, I'll be using this mainly for slide so I'll probably get the nut changed to lift the strings a tiny bit (see, I said the action was very easy) but that's just to accommodate my heavy hand with a bottleneck - it's not my main thing.This is a very good instrument indeed for comparatively little money; it's also very pretty and looks the part amongst my other six guitars. Oh, and unexpectedly, it also came with a well padded gig bag. You can't ask for more.

I was debating whether to buy this or the slightly more expensive steel bodied version. I chose this due to the addition of a pickup, thinking it would be useful for playing live with my band. Unfortunately, the pickup doesn't cut through very well, and bass notes tend to be completely swallowed up, unless you turn your amplifier right up, which, being hollow bodied, tends to induce a lot of feedback.However, acoustically it sounds excellent, and is a great entry into the world of resonator guitars... Tuned to open G or D will give you that classic Delta Blues tone.In hindsight, I wish I'd bought the steel bodied version, which would probably sound brighter and more Bluesy... But its no biggie, this was cheaper, and I still love playing it.

I had wanted a resonator for some time and bought this on the strength of previous reviews. I was not disappointed. It arrived in good time and perfectly in tune. The tone is more mellow than I expected, which is a bonus. Initial playing of the instrument seems good, the guitar is well set up and I don't anticipate having to use the truss rod adjuster provided with the purchase. All in all I'm a happy bunny>

For the price you pay this guitar is a bargain. It's well built, looks good and sounds as loud acoustically as it does when plugged in. The strings are a bit too thick, but that's just my preference. The only minor gripe is there only being one strap lug, this at the base of the body. An extra lug at the base of the neck would have been helpful.

It looks fine but when I played it it gave a dull nondescript sound and there was sometimes an unexpected twang coming out of the resonator and I didn’t like it at all. When I compared it to the Gretsch alligator I knew this was definitely not the guitar for me.

Very impressed with the look of this item, a real looker but less impressed with the high action which will take some getting used to.Also the strings were dirty and required cleaning before use.Also disappointed with the bag as the zip on the pouch pocket had a very flimsy metal loop attaching the zip head to the slider,which to the broke when first opened.I realise this is not a high end product but come on, new items should at least be clean.