I believe this one raises the bar

[ken cierp]

Mrs. KMG and I were talking about that this morning, finding a shop that has one and going for a visit --- We "Best Practice Engineers" are trained to copy or it sounds better "reverse engineer."

[Dave Bagwill]

I actually used the 'reverse engineer' in my post, and deleted it and used "The Cierp touch". :-)

[John Parchem]

That is a very nice guitar, with a great sound.

[Kevin in California]

I sit corrected, rosewood it be

[John Link]

Reverse engineering is often thought of as a pejorative term but - in my mind - it describes an important part of the process by which overall human achievement is accomplished. That's because we must understand where we are to not just move forward, but also simply to maintain standards. The broader that understanding, the better. I have long admired the Martin Company's openness with respect to their products - the factory tours, the lack of patent for the X-brace (which they probably didn't invent anyway), their frequent participation in the discussion for how to make better guitars, and their attitude of if-you-can-do-it-better-than-us-then-do.

When I was involved with software I reverse engineered a program for the Apple II called Appleworks. Even though this was expressly forbidden by its license, the product manager at Apple was quite cooperative - friendly even - and we got along great. Seems that Apple was happy my program provided bug fixes as well as customizations, which saved them the money (somehow?) that issuing official fix releases would have cost. So even those who seem to vehemently oppose reverse engineering can find it desirable.

[ken cierp]

Another thing I really like about the Lowden guitars is the finish -- which is "satin" That has always been my preference, I guess since it is OK on an $8000 instrument I don't feel I'll get banished by being in what I know is the minority.

[Ray Ussery]

Amazingly hypnotizing...that is as close to the sound of my dream guitar as I'm likely to ever hear on this planet.