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.

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.