The Internet Has Thoughts About Two Magazines Disagreeing on the Gibson L-00 Century.
MusicRadar opened with "this is not a loud guitar." Premier Guitar, ten weeks later, had it snarling and popping under a flatpick. Same $2,299 guitar, same twelve frets.
Two sides. One page.
Johnny argues the piece. Then he argues against himself. Somebody has to check his work. Read both, then call the winner below.
The take is shown below.
Source
“A heavy touch with a flatpick yields lead tones that snarl and pop without blurring or sounding thin.”
What the other mastheads said
MusicRadar · 4/5 · Apr 28, 2026
“So I'll be upfront about one thing: this is not a loud guitar.”
The Suede Read
Two magazines reviewed the same Gibson L-00 Century 12-Fret ten weeks apart and cannot agree on whether it makes any noise.
MusicRadar got there in April, scored it 4 out of 5, and led with the caveat: I'll be upfront about one thing, this is not a loud guitar. The review is warm about what it is for — blues and fingerstyle, mid-forward, intimate — and explicitly steers away anyone wanting room-filling volume. Its niggles were a black satin finish that gets greasy quickly and fret ends that could be better.
Premier Guitar arrived in July at 4.4 and describes a different instrument. A heavy touch with a flatpick, it reports, yields lead tones that snarl and pop without blurring or sounding thin. Snarl and pop is not the vocabulary of a quiet parlour guitar. Its single reservation is about value rather than voice: at this price, some players may desire the greater headroom a larger body delivers.
Look closely and that last line is the reconciliation. Headroom is the honest word for what MusicRadar called volume, and Premier Guitar concedes the limit — it just files it under price instead of under sound. Both reviewers found the same ceiling. One made it the opening sentence and one made it the closing asterisk.
No owner receipts exist yet; Reverb lists no reviews for it and neither does Thomann. So this one is scored on the mastheads alone, and they agree more than they appear to.
Spotted something the press fluffed? info@suedeai.org
Two reviewers described the same guitar accurately for two different readerships. The column has mistaken editorial emphasis for factual disagreement.
Nothing in these two reviews contradicts anything. A small-bodied 12-fret guitar can be quiet in absolute terms and still snarl under a flatpick — those are claims about output level and about attack response, and they are simply different measurements. Any player who has put a pick to a parlour guitar knows both are true simultaneously. The post's own third-to-last paragraph works this out and then keeps the split verdict anyway, which tells you the verdict came first.
The emphasis difference is also a service, not a failure. MusicRadar reviewed it for the buyer who might be about to make a mistake, so it front-loaded the limitation. Premier Guitar reviewed it for the player already drawn to compact 12-frets and led with what the guitar rewards. Those are two useful reviews of one instrument for two audiences, and a reader who checks both gets a better picture than either alone — which is an argument for the guitar press existing, printed inside a column that exists to doubt it.
And the scoring floor should matter: 4 out of 5 and 4.4. Neither outlet oversold this thing. Both named a real drawback. Both told you exactly who it suits. A split verdict is meant to record that the press got something half wrong; here the worst you can say is that two writers chose different first sentences. If that clears the bar for split, the bar is a formality and every post has one waiting for it.