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1 month ago | 
acousticguitar.com | Teja Gerken |Doug Young |Greg Olwell |Greg Ruby
Amplifying an acoustic guitar can be a daunting task, often complicated by the very qualities that make a guitar sound great acoustically. After tackling this challenge for 50 years with a popular line of acoustic pickups, L.R. Baggs has taken a different approach: designing a guitar from the ground up for amplified performance.
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1 month ago | 
acousticguitar.com | Teja Gerken |Buck Curran |Greg Olwell
This article was first published in the December 2008 issue of Acoustic Guitar. Luthier Bob Benedetto has established himself as one of the premier archtop makers in the business, and in 2008, he’s celebrating 40 years of building guitars. He spent his teen years playing guitar in various Italian-American dance bands around New Jersey but ultimately followed a fascination with his chosen instrument’s construction.
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1 month ago | 
acousticguitar.com | Teja Gerken |Roger Deitz |Karen Peterson |Jeffrey Pepper Rodgers
From the outside, the Music Emporium looks entirely unassuming: a small strip mall storefront next to a bagel shop in the quiet, leafy town of Lexington, Massachusetts. But open the door, and the sight would widen the eyes of any acoustic guitar aficionado: a bright, airy showroom with scores of Martin, Taylor, and Collings guitars on the wall, along with Santa Cruz, Froggy Bottom, Lowden, Atkin, and other boutique builders.
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Mar 6, 2024 | 
acousticguitar.com | Adam Perlmutter |Teja Gerken |Greg Olwell |James Rotondi
Often referred to as Taylor’s flagship acoustic-electric, the abalone-adorned, spruce and rosewood 814ce has become a modern classic, the supreme example of a grand auditorium cutaway for many guitarists. Interestingly, it only recently received the Builder’s Edition treatment that master luthier Andy Powers has applied to models like the 324ce and 816ce in recent years. But that’s not the real surprise about the new 814ce Builder’s Edition.
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Feb 4, 2024 | 
acousticguitar.com | Teja Gerken |Dana Bourgeois |Brian Michael |Martin Keith
Q: I recently bought a new, factory-made 000 with a torrefied Adirondack spruce top and a light satin finish. I spend each summer and fall in Nova Scotia near the ocean, so I have learned to keep my instruments in their cases with Humidipaks to avoid humidity issues. Even though I did this to my new guitar, the action went from .085″ to .15″ in a heartbeat.
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Jan 7, 2024 | 
acousticguitar.com | Teja Gerken |David McPherson |Greg Olwell |George Gruhn
This lavishly appointed Yamaha L-53 was custom-made for John Denver in 1977. Having previously played several stock Yamaha guitars, Denver ordered a matching pair of six- and 12-string instruments during a tour of Japan, and they were delivered sometime in 1978. During this period, Yamaha’s L-Series (“L” stood for “luxury”) was the company’s high-end line of guitars, available only as special orders. Crafting a set of guitars for one of the era’s biggest stars was certainly a coup for Yamaha.
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Dec 6, 2023 | 
acousticguitar.com | Emile Menasche |Pete Madsen |Greg Cahill |Teja Gerken
Visually, the new Yamaha FG9 R exudes stunning simplicity. Sonically, it’s remarkably complex. The guitar’s unique combination of these two qualities make it one of Yamaha’s finest steel-strings to date. However, even if this elegant offering looked like a concussed hippie’s psychedelic fever dream, its almost effortless explosion of overtones would still mark it as a serious instrument.
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Oct 8, 2023 | 
acousticguitar.com | Teja Gerken |Mark Small
It’s been 50 years since Ralph Towner’s first album solely under his name, Diary, came out on producer Manfred Eicher’s groundbreaking ECM Records label. Towner had already been recognized as a great up-and-coming player for his work in the Paul Winter Consort and the remarkably eclectic quartet Oregon, both of whom could be labeled chamber jazz groups that also played “world music” before that label existed.
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Oct 1, 2023 | 
acousticguitar.com | Martin Keith |Mamie Minch |Teja Gerken
Q: I have started playing with alternate tunings on my guitar but they don’t always sound great—they’re often buzzy and I can’t get them to stay in tune. What can I do to make this work better? —Jennifer SmithA: This is a great example of a simple question with a multifaceted answer. A truly well-done guitar setup often involves splitting some fine hairs of action, neck relief, intonation, and more—and alternate tunings certainly can throw some of those fine adjustments out of balance.
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Aug 20, 2023 | 
acousticguitar.com | Teja Gerken |Jeffrey Pepper Rodgers |Mark Small
Christopher Mallett is among a growing international coterie of ascendant classical guitar virtuosos of African descent. With Black heritage on his father’s side of the family and Italian on his mother’s, Mallett has an abiding interest in African American musical forms that ultimately led him to the music and life story of Justin Holland (1819–1887), America’s first classical guitar master as well as an early civil rights activist.
