Lowden "F" style Red Cedar/Mediterranean Cypress with sound

[Herman]

A customer flamenco guitar player asked if I could make him a Mediterranean Cypress steelstring guitar. These are hard to find or even not at all, but I was that intruiged that I said yes. The Lowden F is 40.2 cm wide, but the usual Cypress boards are just a bit too small for that. My regular supplier was kind enough to search for a wide board in stock, and she found one. So it was triggered to find out if it could produce a steelstring guitar with a flamenco type of sound..Well...I did. Check to soundfiles below. At first I was a bit reluctant because of the desired cedar top. Normally a garanty for a warm sound, but surprinsingly: no warm and rosewood ringing features here, but the properties asked for: dryness and attack.

For more details and pictures, look Here

Here are some sounds (Pure, no effects or eq):
Sound 1
Sound 2

Specs:
Top-Red Cedar, very narrow grained
Back/Sides-Mediterranean Cypress
Binding-EIR
Nek-Honduran Mahogany
Scale-25.6"- 650mm
Nut-45mm
Fingerboard-EIR
Bridge-EIR
Tuners- Waverly gold
Finish- Nitoraqua

[Dave Bagwill]

Beautiful, beautiful, beautiful.
Somewhere in The Lord Of The Rings is a line that "the skill of Gandalf improved with age."
Herman just gets better, too....

[Kevin in California]

First class Herman

Are you playing the flamenco type piece? It's impressive!

Do you play connected through the pickup system directly into your phone or computer?

[Herman]

Thanks boys,
The famous Gandalf did some magic, not real work!

No Kevin, my playing is poor. These tracks are played by the Flamenco player the guitar was made for. And yes, he can really play.
Here a expensive Baggs Anthem pickup is mounted. But the recordings are pure acoustic, made with a condensor mic and a portable micro recorder.
Don't tell, but I like the elementry JJB just as well.
Herman

[John Parchem]

Impressive! Both the look and sound. It's fun to make an instrument for a real player and get to hear it as intended.

[Kevin in California]

Herman
Did you make the pickguard? It looks to be cocobolo.
Is that vine an inlay on it ?

Looks nice

[Kevin in California]

I put one of those Anthems in a OM and could tell not much difference to the piezo JJB