Shabby Chic Guitars

[John Link]

Anyone familiar with Shabby Chic guitars? They say most of the instrument is built with factory parts, but the tops are voiced with thin, light bracing by "their luthier" who trained under Ervin Somogyi. The image below is of a $700 (base price, includes hardshell case) baritone guitar with optional Ryan-style bevel (+$200). They use all solid wood construction, though there is no mention of bindings (which appear to be black plastic or fiber).



Read more about it here, with additional pictures of other configurations:

http://www.shabbychicguitars.com/Baritone.htm

[Dave Bagwill]

John - actually sounds like a good idea for them, in that price range especially.

I did not see the 'all solid wood' statement? I did see solid sitka top.

[John Link]

I see your point Dave. They add the adjective "solid" when describing tops, but not when describing back and side wood.

[John Parchem]

The back and sides are mahogany, I will bet it is solid wood just not worth noting. The price point is very low for hand built small run guitars. They are probably using seconds, from like Martin. Also in one picture I noticed all of their tops had a lot of run out such that they were all two toned with the right light. All and all it would take some work to sell guitars made in NC for $700.

When I had a two day seminar with very prominent luthier in the classical world he talked about people who had taken the same 2 day course and put on their web site trained under ...

[Dave Bagwill]

I sent them an email re: solid wood

Dave Bagwil, luthier
Trained under Kenneth Cierp and my buds at the forum...

[Dave Bagwill]

No response yet: solid wood email.

[ken cierp]

It looks to me as though these guy/gals are "modifiers" not "makers/builders" So that guitar perhaps is from China (my Asian contact would charge me $125 solid top lam sides). They would then reach in through the sound hole and scrap the daylights out of the bracing to thin it down -- not uncommon. Then again I could be all wet. At one time I was doing some simple mod and set up on Blueridge guitars -- If I do say so myself the play-ability and sound quality of those instruments were quite good. I don't do that any longer since I cannot meet the distributor minimum Blueridge purchase requirements