Simon & Patrick 6-Strings, Art & Lutherie 12-String

I’ve recently become a devotee of Godin acoustic guitars. Their acoustic range includes Simon & Patrick, Art & Lutherie, Norman and Seagull, and they’re all made in Canada. These guitars have been around for quite a while and over the years I’ve tried several that have belonged to friends and some of my guitar students. They were always good, but recently their quality has gone up and they’re now excellent instruments.

This is my Simon & Patrick Woodland Cedar Folk. I saw this in a music shop in Glasgow about a year and a half ago, liked the look of it and had a try. I was amazed at how much this small guitar filled the room. It has less bottom end and more mid-range and high end than a dreadnought and it projects really well which makes it very suitable for fingerstyle playing. It sounds great played with a pick too, although it’s best not to lay into it too hard the way you can with a dreadnought. Based on the dimensions of a classical guitar, these would have been the first kind of guitars designed to have steel strings to provide more volume and a brighter tone to accompany popular songs of the early 1900s and compete in volume with banjos and fiddles at barn dances.

The big brother to the above guitar, this is my Simon & Patrick Woodland Cedar dreadnought. With a larger body, it’s deeper sounding and more powerful than the folk guitar. Dreadnoughts were developed in about 1916 and over the next couple of decades became increasingly popular in country and bluegrass music for their driving, powerful sound which suited being played hard with a pick, especially when playing the fast, intricate bass lines which were integral to the bluegrass music of the 1940s and 50s. These guitars can also be used for fingerpicking with good results, although they tend not to project as well as smaller folk guitars.

Lastly today, my Art & Lutherie Cedar 12-String. What more is there to say, 12-strings are great and this is a lovely example; low action, accurate intonation and stable tuning.

These guitars are all beautifully made, they sound great (I’ve discovered what a lovely sounding wood cedar can be) and new, they all come in under £300. I’ve heard it said that Godin are subsidised by the Canadian government, hence the low price for guitars of this quality. Check out their website.

Some thoughts on buying an acoustic guitar. Dreadnoughts are obviously the most popular acoustics, but they’re not suitable for everyone. Too many times I’ve had new students show up with a new dreadnought and they can barely get their arms round it. Wasn’t it obvious when they were in the music shop that the instrument was too big for them? Didn’t the staff point out that dreadnoughts aren’t the only size of steel-string acoustic guitar? It would seem not. They should have, though.

Squier Stratocaster ‘57 Reissue 1983

The first guitar that I ever bought and still my principal electric weapon of choice. For anyone that doesn’t know, the Squier range of guitars and basses, the first Fender instruments to be made in Japan, were brought out to compete with the high quality, low price guitars that were being produced in Japan by companies like Tokai and were having a detrimental effect on sales of Fender’s USA made instruments.

Squiers were built from original Fender factory blueprints and were very accurate replicas of vintage models. Such was their quality when they came out in 1982, that when some sample instruments were sent to Fender in the US for inspection, the management and staff were amazed by them, particularly as the quality of USA Fenders had deteriorated under the ownership of CBS (who had bought out Leo Fender in 1965) and by 1982 had reached a low point. The quality of these Fender Japan instruments may well have galvanised Fender USA staff into buying the company back from CBS in 1985 and once again producing top quality instruments. Squiers from this early period, especially ones with a JV (Japanese Vintage) prefix before the serial number, are now sought after and considered quite collectable. Current Squiers are made in China and, while they lack the very high quality of early examples, are still good instruments.

This one was built in 1983 (the date pencilled on the end of the neck is 9th April 1983) and is a ‘57 reissue Stratocaster. I got it when it was just over a year old and it was already second-hand, although it was in immaculate condition and had been fitted with a 5-way pickup selector. It has picked up quite a few battle scars since I’ve had it, it had a refret in 1995 and in 2001 I changed the pickups for Fender Vintage ‘57/’62 replacements as the old ones had become a bit quiet. The essential character of the guitar remains very much intact and it plays like a dream. The body is made of alder and is light, resonant and the guitar is surprisingly loud when played acoustically. The neck has quite a slim ‘C’ profile and is made of one piece of maple. The bridge assembly and tuners are all original and still work fine.

In a later post I’ll give you some tips about setting up and maintaining Strats, as it can be a little tricky to get them playing at their best.

There are quite a few Squiers of this vintage on eBay most of the time, so if you’re looking for a very high quality Strat or Telecaster for quite a bit less than you’d pay for a Fender USA made vintage reissue, you could do worse than pick one up.

Is There Anybody Out There…?

Hello. Welcome to my blog! I guess I should tell anyone who’s looking in a bit about myself. I’m John, I’m 41 and I recently moved from Glasgow to Oxford. I’m a guitarist (hence the title of the blog) and for the last 12 years I’ve been a  guitar teacher.  On here I’ll be talking and opining about all thing guitar and music and the chances are that I’ll also sound off about things that irritate me, like politics, religion and various other human foibles that get under my skin. I’ll try not to rant too often, but I can’t promise anything!

Over the next few days, I’ll be introducing you to my guitar collection, which is fairly healthy and likely to slowly increase. I’ll warn you now, I’m a bit of a geek and am likely to ramble on at length and in detail about the minutiae of these marvellous instruments, but I hope you’ll find something of interest, especially if you’re looking to invest in your first guitar or add to your own collection.

As regards guitarists I like, there’s nothing too out of the ordinary. I got my first guitar after seeing Eric Clapton in concert in 1983 (although I had been playing my dad’s acoustic for about a year beforehand). I’m a big Pink Floyd fan, so obviously David Gilmour is a player I admire. I love the Beatles and, as well as being great songwriters, McCartney, Lennon and Harrison were much underrated guitarists, both on electric and acoustic. Throw in Mark Knopfler, Peter Green and the great Gary Moore and that’ll give you an idea of where I’m coming from.

Well, here’s hoping some of you drop in from time to time.