I have an Amistar Tricone built for me last year. It is a great guitar! (not a squareneck though)
Since I got it, I have changed the cones for National Hot Rods, and
the guitar really sings now. Lots of tone, lots of sustain and just great to play.

I highly recommend getting one! (enclosed is a picture of the happy owner)

Thomas

I took it round several luthiers to get the problems fixed. General consensus from them:

* Sounds great, one of the best tricones they had heard
* Attention to detail on the construction not up to the standard as NRP. This was mainly cosmetic, but one of the frets had popped up, and the nut was too small. I don't know if the main problem that needed fixing, a backbowed neck, was a result of construction or the guitar sitting in a warehouse for 6 years.
* Agree w eskimo - neck is great. And I prefer a flat fretboard for slide, which mine has too.

All in all a real winner, if a little rustic in its charms. If you can find one to play, then the risks are avoided.

They sound different than a National and I love playing them. I have both nationals and Amistars, and tend to play more on the Amistars.

Cheers
BERT

I had to do quite a lot of work on this guitar, although eventually it has wound up sounding and playing great.

It was described as having a minor dent in the hand rest and having a chipped corner of the headstock.
When I got it all three original cones were crushed (perhaps the hand rest had originally been bent in a lot further and then pulled out again). It also turned out to have a some dents in the side and one small one in the back. I suppose this extra damage could have occurred during shipping but I doubt it.
The trouble is, with the original cones crushed I was never able to tell what the guitar might have been like 'factory fresh'.

Having owned the guitar for a while I have now noticed a number of things about it that are related to the manufacturing process. The nickel plating and the pre-process polishing of the brass body are a bit rough. The neck had the binding masked before being sprayed with a rather opaque ugly brown finish. Despite this being a fairly new guitar this finish had already developed many fine cracks and the masking process had left a rather rough transition between the finish and the binding, with finish sprayed over the binding in places.

The soundwell is made from very, very, roughly plated steel and this has been soldered on to the brass top rotated at least 2 degrees from where it should be - eventually this leads to the bridge and saddle also being rotated and throws off the intonation. In any case the design seems not to allow for any intonation compensation - OK for slide only but not for fretting.

The inside of the guitar was very dirty and covered in black powder. At first I though this might be a residue from the plating and polishing processes, but have also wondered if the guitar could have been involved in a guitar shop fire.

Looking down along the guitar from the headstock you can see that the body itself has a twist in it the upper and lower bouts are rotated in respect of each other. I don't see how this could happen other than during manufacture.

I have no idea if any of these 'faults' are typical of Amistar guitars.

All of the above being said the guitar has a good neck very well fitted to the body and the flat fingerboard is well suited to slide. I now have National ResoPhonic (not 'hot rod') cones in it and the guitar plays and sounds great. The 'rose' engraving on the guitar is very clean and well executed.

Franta at Amistar is great to deal with. He even sent me an Amistar headstock badge for free which my guitar did not have.

In comparison my NRP baritione is immaculate with a considerably higher construction quality than the Amistar.