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Tag: acoustic guitar

  • How I Got My Guitar Back after a Decade of Searching

    How I Got My Guitar Back after a Decade of Searching

    The summer after my sophomore year of college, I interned for a summer at a church in Joplin, Missouri. The pay was not great, but to be fair I didn’t really know what I was doing, either.

    Exhibit A: I remember one day we had purchased a bunch of food for an event, and I put the food that needed to be in the refrigerator in the freezer instead. Nothing like five gallons of frozen-solid milk on a hot day! Refreshing.

    Nevertheless, over the summer I was able to save up enough money from my internship to buy a new guitar. I’d been playing guitar for several years by this point, but I still had my cheap starter Squier and Takamine that badly needed to be upgraded.

    There was a local music store in town that I frequented in my search, and I remember walking in one day and seeing an acoustic guitar on display. It was a dreadnaught with a cutaway and a deep-brown cedar top. It caught my eye, and as I picked it up and began to play it, it felt good. Really good.

    It was a Seagull S6 guitar, and I had to have it. As soon as I had the cash in hand, I went back and bought it.

    I loved that guitar.

    I played it all the time.

    I knew it inside and out.

    I’d play it in my dorm room. I’d sing worship songs with my friends in the chapel. I put on a free concert in the student union with it.

    I even won my school’s talent show playing a song I had written on it.

    It was my guitar, my companion in life.

    Ten years later, and now I’m living in Colorado. I come home from work one day to find the front door of my house wide open. That’s weird, I thought. Maybe my wife didn’t get the door shut all the way when she went to work this morning.

    I didn’t think much of it and went inside. I wasn’t in the house for more than a minute when I heard my wife’s car pull up. When she came in, I jokingly teased her about leaving the door open. “I didn’t leave the door open,” she replied.

    We stood there and looked at each other.

    About five seconds later, it clicked. We’ve been robbed!

    I ran upstairs and saw a disheveled mess. The bed mattress was pulled off the frame. Papers were everywhere. Our computer was gone. My wife’s wedding rings were gone. My guitars were gone.

    It was an awful, sickening feeling, one I wouldn’t wish on my worst enemy.

    I immediately bought another Seagull guitar with the insurance money — a different model this time. Actually, I bought two: a six-string M series and a twelve-string S series. But neither felt right. Yes, they were Seagulls; yes, they were high-quality; but neither of them was my guitar.

    I ended up selling them both after a year or two. I tried out a few more Seagulls over the years, including an Entourage, which was the newer version of that original S6 I had bought back in Missouri. But it didn’t matter: none of them played or felt like my guitar.

    Fast forward another ten years, and now I’m living in the Puget Sound area. I was browsing on Reverb one day when I saw an older Seagull Artist Series guitar for sale for a very reasonable price.

    This guitar looked just like my guitar.

    It was the same model year as my guitar — 2001.

    It had the same look as my guitar, down to the same wear on the sound hole.

    It even came with the same case as my guitar had.

    The only difference was that this guitar was the higher-end version of the one I had owned. It had a different inlay pattern, slightly different hardware, and a better preamp. But it cost just about the same amount that I had paid for my guitar in the summer of 2001. (In fact, I think it may have even been a little less.)

    After I overcame the initial shock of what I was looking at, I made the decision to pull the trigger — how could I not?

    As soon as I had it in my hands and played a chord, I knew this was the one. It played right, it felt right, it sounded right.

    Everything about it was perfect.

    It took ten years, lots of patience, and not a little bit of luck, but I finally got my guitar back.

    My Seagull Artist Series guitar, which you can have when you pry it out of my cold, dead fingers.
  • A Quick History of the Martin Dreadnaught Guitar

    A Quick History of the Martin Dreadnaught Guitar

    When you hear the word “guitar,” what image comes into your mind?

    If you are thinking about an electric guitar, it’s likely you have an image of a Stratocaster in your mind’s eye. But if you thought about an acoustic guitar, you almost certainly imagined a dreadnaught.

    Dreadnaughts are by far the most common size of guitar today. They feature a bigger body — bigger than all of the various acoustic sizes except jumbo — that offers an equally big sound. Dreadnaught guitars are usually louder and deeper in tone than 000, folk, or parlor body styles, and the large-bodied guitar has found a home across rock, country, and bluegrass genres.

    But this wasn’t always the case. The guitar itself has a long and storied history, but the dreadnaught didn’t come about until the early 1900s.

    C.F. Martin’s first dreadnaught

    The man who is responsible for creating the dreadnaught is none other than C.F. Martin, founder of the company that bears his name. He envisioned a bigger, louder guitar and took inspiration for the name from the HMS Dreadnaught, a new British warship at the time. The Dreadnaught actually lent its name not just to the guitar but to the entire class of battleships of which it was a part.

    The HMS Dreadnaught (Picture by U.S. Navy, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons)

    The first dreadnaught guitar was released in 1916, but interestingly, it didn’t bear the Martin name. Rather, Martin built the guitars for the Oliver Ditson Company. The Ditson line of guitars sold dismally, however, and was eventually discontinued. Players were used to smaller guitar bodies and saw no reason to switch. To make matters worse, the Ditson company itself fell on hard times and was out of business by 1920.

    If at first you don’t succeed, call the marketing department

    Martin may have failed in his first attempt, but he felt the dreadnaught was still a solid concept. After improving the design, he released the first large-body guitars under his own name: the D-1 (later renamed the D-18) and the D-2 (later dubbed the D-28).

    A Martin D-28 guitar (Photo by IchiroNakagawa, CC BY-SA 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0>, via Wikimedia Commons)

    Even this second round of dreadnoughts did not initially fly off the shelves, so the Martin company had to resort to drastic measures: they called the marketing department.

    The 1935 Martin catalogue attempted to shine the new guitars in a more positive light. They focused on the benefits of the bassy, deep tone and the features of the guitar that made it an ideal choice for playing with a plectrum (aka guitar pick).

    The strategy paid off. Soon afterward, sales of the (now) D-28 took off, and Martin never looked back. The dreadnaught guitar, and the D-28 in particular, became the standard acoustic guitar for players all over the country. Demand was so great that during the 1950s, there was a two-year wait list for a new instrument.

    From dismal sales to industry standard

    The dreadnaught guitar that Martin pioneered eventually became the industry norm as well. The first serious challenger in the market was Gibson’s Hummingbird guitar, released in 1960, but today any guitar company worth its salt has a dreadnaught line (including my favorite brand of acoustics, Seagull, which I lovingly call “the poor man’s Martin”).

    A Gibson Hummingbird guitar (Photo by RobinZwama, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons)

    Martin’s D-series guitars continue to be ubiquitous today. Famous players such as Billy Strings, Seth Avett, and James Taylor all play Martin dreadnaughts, and they can be found across almost all genres of popular music.

    With their loudness, deep lows, rich mids, and clarity of tone, they will likely continue to be the guitars against which all other acoustics will be compared for a long time to come.

  • Godin Guitars: the World’s Most Underrated Brand

    Godin Guitars: the World’s Most Underrated Brand

    When I was in college, I worked a summer job and saved up enough money to buy a nice, new guitar. I was in Joplin, MO, at the time, and I wandered into a local music store.

    Little did I know that would be the day I fell in love.

    There was a six-string acoustic guitar with a cutaway on display. I walked up and played it, and boy, did it feel good. It had a nice, rich tone as well. The more I played it, the more I didn’t want to put it down. I looked at the headstock and saw a bird on it. The brand was Seagull, a company I’d never heard of before. Nevertheless, I had to have that guitar.

    Robert Godin

    Seagull was the brainchild of Canadian guitar maker Robert Godin. Godin grew up (and still lives) in Quebec. He began making guitars in 1972 as a way to act on his passion for good music and craftsmanship. Over the next decade, he was able to parlay his small shop in rural Quebec into a solid guitar company, Godin Guitars, which is now one of the largest guitar manufacturers in North America — but one many musicians are still unfamiliar with, unfortunately.

    In many ways, Robert Godin might be considered the Canadian Paul Reed Smith. In interviews, Robert’s dedication to and passion about making the absolute best guitars is immediately apparent. Like Paul Reed Smith, he obsesses over every aspect of his guitars and the processes by which they are made. And much like PRS, people who have played or owned a Godin rarely if ever have any complaints.

    Godin family brands

    In 1982, Godin branched out and started manufacturing acoustic guitars under the Seagull brand. Seagull was started to build affordable, high-quality solid wood acoustics. Mine was the Seagull brand’s flagship, the S6. (I lost that guitar a number of years ago but have since replaced it with an Artist Series, the higher-end counterpart to the S6.)

    In the years that followed, Godin has branched out with other brands as well. Norman, Art & Lutherie, and Simon and Patrick are all additional acoustic guitar brands the company has started. (Fun fact: Simon and Patrick are the names of Robert’s sons.) They also make classical guitars under the La Patrie brand. These brands, like Seagull, offer a variety of guitars from entry level to high end.

    Godin brand logo

    The company also still sells guitars under the original Godin brand. Godin guitars are mid-to-high-end electrics. I personally have a Godin Progression Plus, a Stratocaster-type guitar, that in my opinion rivals any American-made Fender. And I bought it used for under $600! They have standard electric guitars and also guitars equipped with piezo pickups, MIDI outputs, and more.

    Godin features

    Godin guitars (and their family brands) generally share some common features.

    First of all, as I’ve mentioned, Godin’s quality is excellent across the board. Even their “entry level” guitars have great fretwork, finish, and overall craftsmanship.

    Second, their fretboards tend to have a different feel than other brands. Many of their guitars offer a fretboard radius of between 12 and 14 inches, as opposed to a typical Fender radius of 9.5 inches. They also often put a wider nut on their guitars, especially the acoustics. This wider nut (and therefore neck) is designed to help make finger picking easier, but it also helps players like me who have large hands. This combination tends to make the necks much easier to play, at least for me.

    Godin Progression Plus Guitar
    My Godin Progression Plus

    Third, and most importantly in my opinion, they simply blow away the competition at their price points. As I mentioned, my Progression Plus feels like a guitar worth two or three times as much. I can say the same for my Artist Series, which I bought used for around $500. I’ve picked up $1000 Martins and Taylors that didn’t sound as good as my guitar. And the same is true for others, based on reviews I’ve seen over the years.

    A great brand in so many ways

    Robert Godin has truly built a great company and brand over the last 50 years. His guitars offer North American-made quality at a very reasonable price. They’ve also leaned into sustainable business practices — they literally grow and harvest their own wood in their own forest. And, of course, they provide hundreds of jobs to the fine people of Quebec.

    There is a lot more you can learn about this great but relatively unknown brand, but my suggestion to you is if you ever get the chance to pick one up, do yourself a favor. But you’d better have your wallet handy!