Acoustic Guitar Construction

Preston's guitar has a rounder tone, fuller in the 600-800 mhz range, which is tricky, because if you overdo it, you get a nasal quality, if you underdo it, you get a scooped sound. Preston pretty much nailed it imo, which gives that fullness.

I like both guitars. If the Mitcheletti is like the classical rigid rim on the web site then it is a size smaller. I think the Mitcheletti has a cleaner sound the bass sounds less hollow than the Petterson as recorded. I agree with Ken that it is better suited as a jazz or contemporary finger picking guitar.

I listened to the clip Ray posted the rigid rim steel string sound a like his smaller size guitar "The Kestral" not like his jumbo sized guitar.

If I closed my eyes and listened I would have said it was an acoustic archtop jazz guitar and not a very good one at that.

Looks pretty cool, likely a little more comfortable -- but than you'd be adding 2" !!! all around the perimeter of an already comfortable OM/000 -- but for all the extra work my old ears just can't pick up any musical improvement.

I read his notes on the website for the first classical rigid rim. He stated that he made it to put a small body instrument in a large guitar body because a big guitar player wanted a bigger classical and he did not think it would sound right. So the inside body on that instrument is the size of a normal classical.

Interesting comparison. My ear found them all remarkably similar. But for reasons I cannot put in words, it "went for" the smaller instrument. Not by an overwhelming margin, but that was my ear's preference. Might be EQ. They all sounded good.

I can think of reasons a "rigid rim" might cause, say, increased volume and/or a greater range of response but did not notice anything like that in comparing the sounds.