Featured, News »

0% interest, that is.
Yep, for the next few months, you can get your grubby hands on a spanking new Taylor through a financing agreement with 0% interest. If you’ve been hankering after a new guitar, and considering financing it, now might just be the time. Until September, 2010, Taylor (in partnership with GE Money) are offering zero percent interest on 12-month finance agreements.
The offer covers new guitars (obviously) from the following series:

500 Series/Acoustic 5 Series and up
T5 Standard and Custom
T3 models
All SolidBody models

Check out how to get your …

Featured, Guitar 101, Workshop »

What the hell is a neck reset and why the hell would you want one?
You’ll often hear talk about neck resets (or sometimes, neck sets) but the reasons it’s required are often glossed over by saying it’s just something that acoustics need sometimes. It’s all pretty simple and it has to do with geometry (stay with me…) and wood.
Huh?
Let me try to make a little sense of that.
Why would I need a neck reset?
When an acoustic guitar is made, it is designed and constructed such that the guitar’s string height …

Featured, Workshop »

The third and last article in the story of the restoration of a pre-’34 Martin guitar with a broken bridge. The first two parts of the Martin Custom Bridge Replacement cover removal of the broken bridge and the carving of a replacement.
The first step in getting this replacement back on the guitar is ‘fitting’ it to the guitar top. Like many of us, over the years, pretty much all guitars gain a bigger belly. Under a lot of tension from the strings, changes occur in the wood of a guitar. …

Featured, Workshop »

This is second part of the story of replacing a broken bridge on a, rather lovely, pre-1934 Martin. This update is slightly tardy so feel free to catch up on part one (where we remove the broken bridge) first.
Done? All caught up? Splendid.
Now the broken bridge is off, this is how it all starts. You can see the removed bridge sitting on a block on Brazilian rosewood that will become its replacement. Brazilian rosewood is in extremely short supply and is very tightly controlled species as it was over-harvested for …

Featured, News »

Vintage have announced the launch of a signature model, Gordon Giltrap electro-acoustic guitar.
Based on an instrument that was custom-made by, luthier, Rob Armstrong for Giltrap in 1980, the Vintage signature model was built with the input of both Giltrap and Armstrong.
The Grand Auditorium/000 style guitar features a high-grade, solid, North-American cedar top and mahogany back and sides. We’re guessing the back and sides are laminated as they don’t specify solid in the same way it’s called out for the top. The bridge is rosewood and carries a compensated …

Competition, Featured »

Here’s one for all you crazy youngsters with your YouTubes and your internets and whatnot.
Epiphone are offering the chance to win one of their, rather nice, Masterbuilt acoustic guitars. They’re all-solid, well put together and very, very handsome.
To be in with a chance to win, you need to video yourself playing something on an Epiphone acoustic, upload it to somewhere on the net and submit the link to Epiphone. They’ll scrutinise them and carefully adjudicate (i.e. laugh at them) and the best one will be published on Epiphone’s own site …

Acoustic, Featured »

Continuing their trend of releasing guitars with slightly unusual numbers of strings, Taylor have introduced the Baritone 8-String.
With Taylor’s GS (Grand Symphony) body shape and a long scale length of 27 inches, the addition of two octave strings on the third and forth strings provides a smattering of upper-register sparkle without straying too far into all-out, 12-string jingle-jangle territory.
The Baritone 8-String has Taylor’s Expression system built in for amplification duties.  The body top is sitka spruce and the back and sides are solid, Indian rosewood.  A Venetian cutaway is standard.
Pearl …

Featured, News »

Look closely.
See that?  That’s a rosewood bridge with an acoustic saddle on there.  But it looks like a Tele bridge.  If you’re going to make a hybrid-type guitar from a Tele, that’s a nice touch.
And that’s what this is.  The Acoustasonic Tele is fitted with a Fishman Aurasystem to allow realistic, acoustic tones from a Tele.  It’s also got a regular, magnetic neck pickup to give more traditional (electric) Tele sounds.
Cool, eh?

The magnetic pickup is a Custom Shop Twisted Tele single-coil.  Its controls are on the front plate as per …

Workshop »

This is a bit special.  It’s a lovely, pre-war Martin.  Actually, it’s pre-1934 if you want to get a little more precise (but only a little) – it’s fitted with bar frets.
It’s been through the wars a little and has, at some stage in the past had a long side-crack repaired. That repair has lasted some time from the look of it and doesn’t overly concern me.
What is a concern, however, is the bridge.  The leading edge has cracked and broken off under string-tension.  The owner saved the piece that …

Guitar 101, Headline »

While there is a massive chunk of the this site’s audience already very familiar with what each bit of a guitar is, this article is really aimed at those who might be just starting their guitar journey (or even just thinking about it).
This first article in Guitar 101 is a primer (or a refresher if you want to do a little revision) to ensure we all know the basics before we start moving on to look, in more detail, at all of the bits of a guitar.  For that reason, …