Very rarely does a new brand create the instant buzz won by newcomer Nadine. IT samples the 'Special' to find out what makes Nadine hot.

Only very recently introduced onto the U.K. market, the Nadine range already seems to have won itself the sort of player and retailer 'this one is hot' reputation that was probably last accorded to Tokai when that brand made its initial impact on the British scene. What it is that makes any one brand so instantly attractive is hard to define, but rumour has it that Nadine guitars are a clever (and carefully thought-out) combination of the talents of a handful of the very top Japanese guitar makers, working in conjunction with Dixie's Music, one of the U.K.'s smaller importers but one whose proprietor, Dixie Kidd, not only has a track record for spotting exciting new products (he also handles the Tom Scholz Rockman range) but also happens to be a player himself. Before picking on the Nadine 'Special' model for this review, your IT team also looked closely at samples of the rest of the Nadine range - running from basic but exceptionally high quality 'brand F' copies, up to the 'SuperStrat' Special. Each of them impressed us as exceptional in their quality and value, but it was the Special that we settled on to review.

CONSTRUCTION & HARDWARE

Pick the Nadine Special out of its case and it oozes class. The body weighs just about the same as a Strat's and is (as our pic. shows) identically shaped. Interestingly, the body is made of Castor Arabia, apparently an oriental member of the Alder family and the same wood which a lot of the Tokais were made from. The Nadine's neck, however, is Canadian Rock Maple, and very nice it looks too. It fixes to the body via the usual four bolt joint, but it's a good one, and very much a token of the overall quality with which this guitar has been made and assembled.

On the hardware side (and all of it is black coloured), the machines are Gotohs, and they work very well indeed, while the tremolo bridge is a basic Strat type with the usual fully individually adjustable saddles and through-the-body string fastening. It may be perfectly true that the Nadine doesn't have one of the new 'Supertrems', but a lot of players who don't have a guitar roadie to pass them guitars number 2-infinity when a string breaks are going to be pleased by this absence. Changing a string on the conventionally-nutted (sounds all right to me, John - A. Skinhead) Nadine is just as easy as it is on a Strat and, given that the trem works well (it does), then it's a far more practical proposition for the average semi-pro player with only the one guitar than something with a locking nut/trem system.

The 'Special' tag in the Nadine's name comes from the fact that, whilst it doesn't boast an advanced whammy bar system, it does break with true Fender-style tradition by having a humbucker fitted by the bridge. This is complemented by two single coils in the usual Strat positions, and the combination is controlled from a 5-way pickup selector plus a single volume and tone combination of rotary pots.

Finish on our test sample was immaculate, the white body flawless, the one-piece Maple neck/fingerboard perfectly rounded to a typical Strat-like profile. Into the face of the fretboard side of the Maple are fitted quite highly profiled medium/thin gauge frets (very much a la Fender), each of which was set perfectly smooth against the edge of the neck and was nicely finished from a profile point of view.

A final point worth noting is that each Nadine comes with a courtesy package containing a Blitz 'Gloss Care' cleaning cloth and a Lenny Pogan 'Blue Slide' bottleneck. This latter fits like a ring on your finger and is a very useful little device indeed. We suppose the addition of these might be looked on by the cynical as no big deal, but our feeling was that their inclusion represented a nice touch from Dixie Kidd.

PLAYABILITY & SOUND

It's easy to see why the Nadines have already picked up such a strong reputation among retailers and players alike - our sample felt like a peach! Everything about the guitar, from the finishing quality to the feel of the fast playing neck, told the same story of care in manufacture and setting up.

Tested through a variety of amps (ranging from a Custom sound 30 watt tranny Cub to our Laney AOR30 valve combo), the Nadine sounded absolutely great with all of them. Switched to the back (humbucking) pickup, the output level was high enough to overdrive all the amps we tried, and the sound was really 'ballsy' - sorry, we know that's a cover-all word that can describe a lot of tones, but it really is the most apt we could find! Flick the Special over to the mid and neck pickups, and the sound mellows out and turns very close indeed to that from a superior class Strat - but it's that 'ears on fire' attack of the back humbucker which sets this guitar well apart from the run of the mill Strat copy.

From a playing angle, the trem worked very well (as most well set up Strat-like systems do) and the neck felt ideal for speed playing, with a mild camber and a width which ran to a whisker over ¹⁵/₈" at the nut and 2 ¹/₁₆" at the twelfth fret.

CONCLUSIONS

Beautifully made, the Nadine Special is probably the ideal guitar for the player who wants a 'SuperStrat' sound and yet doesn't want all the fuss and bother of an advanced trem. In manufacturing and finishing terms it's far superior to the average Japanese guitar, and has a superbly ballsy sound with distinct class, setting it aside from the often seemingly endless procession of 'me too' Jap models.

With an RRP of £225 the Special isn't a giveaway, but it's more than a match for most in quality and sound terms, and offers a very fair deal for your money. The Nadine Special is a hell of a nice guitar, and one that anyone should feel proud to own.

RRP £225 Inc. VAT.

Details from Dixie's Music, (Contact Details).