This is why there is hope for all guitar makers

[peter havriluk]

Agreed (for whatever that's worth). The Baby was odd one out, a bit. And the $5K Martin sounded better than the other one to my inexperienced ears.

[ken cierp]

This illustrates the most important ingredient involved in a nice sounding guitar -- the player

[Dave Bagwill]

My memory is not good enough to even remember that whole arrangement. He sure does a nice job.

[John Link]

Here are two pages with heavy hitters (Laskin, Lowden, Manzer, and Benedetto) as well as the work of less well known builders and a factory or two, complete with short sound samples for comparison:

1. http://symphontreemusic.com/listening/

2. http://symphontreemusic.com/analog-diaries/

It is all finger style and the level of playing is even; sounds like it could be the same player. One of the richest sounding is a 14 1/2 inch guitar by Joel Michaud. Michaud is a 24 year old, full time carpenter who makes guitars in his spare time - in his garage in Ontario! Dan Minard also hits hard with his L-OO and wide fingerboard plus a second entry, an unlabelled "parlor" that had a page at one time but now it has disappeared. Benedetto's guitar is named "Satin Doll" and he is given credit for it on his own page, plus there is an interview with him concerning the instrument. "Satin Doll" is also a small guitar, 14 1/2 inches, originally built as a pure acoustic, to which someone added a pickup after it was sold. Another interesting instrument is a gypsy style by Allan Beardsell that features a baked Lutz top - 200 degrees for 2 hours.

There is a wide assortment of woods, scale lengths, and body sizes represented. The photography is excellent. If you take a listen and look, plan to linger. There is a lot to take in.

[Herman]

A posted sound sample is fun to listen to. 'Cause guitars aren't made for nice pics, but for making sounds.
But there is often a big gap between the sound between a sample and playing a guitar in real life.
But what the heck, still find samples fun to listen to.
So keep posting them!!
Herman

[John Link]

Yes Herman, you never know how the sound was altered. But then, sound is altered, shaped, whatever, in just about every commercial recording we can buy. The advantage of those two pages is, presumably, all the clips are done in the same way, so you can hear that some gits are bass loaded, other treble, some quite balanced, and a few sound like they have more overtones than the others.

Here is another single clip, of a 2009 Somogyi OM. It has a very long scale - 25.9" (657.9 mm) - and a wide lower bout for an OM - 15 3/4". Looks to me about as large as many dreads. Price is in the neighborhood of $25k, about the same as some of the heavies in my other post. B&S are Brazilian Rosewood, which some postings on the internet assert now must be documented much more explicitly since this last June. A Catch-22 sort of requirement, as in it must have been imported from the time when documentation was neither required nor provided; however, you must present authentic documentation that it was imported then. (How accurate this info might or might not be is beyond my expertise.) Someone like Somogyi, who has a large inventory dating back many decades, must be going nuts if these are the facts.

[John Parchem]

I will take that last guitar, sounds pretty good.