seth Baccus

When the custom shops of the big names aren’t enough, maybe it’s time to investigate the increasing number of independent makers we have here in the UK. Seth Baccus is an excellent place to start…

Nautilus Classic

SETH BACCUS NAUTILUS CLASSIC £4,299

CONTACT SETH BACCUS Email seth@sethbaccus.com WEB www.sethbaccus.com

Seth Baccus has had guitar experience at the highest level as the stepson of Andy Manson, whom we know as one of the UK making founders, along with his brother, Hugh. Seth worked at Mansons Guitar Shop for 12 years, eight as the manager, and built his first guitar in 2004. He’s had on-the-road experience with John Paul Jones (including the Led Zepp reunion rehearsals and live shows) and worked with local mates Muse. Since 2009, he’s been crafting his own-brand guitars professionally, initially in Portugal with Andy Mason who relocated there in 2010, and now back in the UK.

The Nautilus here certainly has some of the Manson DNA with an outline that seems to meld a Telecaster with the style of a Les Paul, although side by side with both, it looks very much its own thing. Like Andy Manson’s designs (and his brother, Hugh’s), there’s that line that flows from the rounded upper shoulder into the cup of the single cutaway and up into quite a small horn that has an inward-pointing tip here.

“It primarily it comes from Andy and his original Bluebird design that he came up with in the early 90s,” explains Seth. “He was trying to build an acoustic guitar that a Telecaster player would play sitting in the kitchen or wherever. An intimate ‘home’

guitar, an acoustic guitar that was very playable and with good high-fret access. It was the shape of that line from the top shoulder into the cutaway; it just got me the first time I ever saw it.

“So when I came to design my own range of guitars – I’d been working with Andy for a few years by that point – it sort of seemed fitting to pay homage to where my education had come from in the design of the guitar. Likewise, the headstock: Andy’s is an asymmetrical shape and I’ve added some symmetry and made it fit an electricstyle guitar. But, yes, it’s very much inspired by Andy’s work.”

Perhaps unusually for its style, it centres on a Fender-like scale. “A kind of hybrid between the Les Paul I wanted but the Fender [Telecaster] that felt more comfortable to play, that’s where the Nautilus concept came from,” says Seth. The body is approximately 330mm (13 inches) wide by 445mm (17.5 inches) long, and trimmer in depth than a Les Paul at 50mm falling to approximately 41mm by the rim, with a beautifully graduated violin-like arching to the top carve. There’s no ribcage cutaway on the one-piece Spanish cedar back, and its relatively plain mahogany-like colour and grain is left pretty natural. It’s in stark contrast to both

the single cream-bound figured maple top and the figured maple neck, which have a darker, almost antique-like colouration that ties in perfectly with the unbound ebony fingerboard and headstock facing. The finish all over is a very silky satin, rather than high gloss, which feels quite wonderful to the touch.

The neck is a combination of two highly figured quarter-sawn pieces of maple with a central rosewood/maple/rosewood lamination, and extends full width into the body; its foot sits some 33mm under the neck pickup. There’s a very small elliptical heel that obviously follows the line of the body from that rounded upper shoulder into the cutaway.

The detail and craft is wonderful. A finish like this would show any slight tool mark, but there aren’t any. The fingerboard edges are lightly rounded, the highly polished frets have virtually domed ends, the tangs are notched so you don’t see them. Can a top nut be a thing of beauty? Well, this one is superbly cut and shaped, not a sharp edge in sight. Look and learn. There’s no bling, flame maple aside, although the dot inlays on the face and side are mother-ofpearl and subtly shine, just like the inlaid headstock logo and the stylised shell emblem on the ebony truss rod cover.

“it seemed fitting to pay homage to where my eduction had come from in the design of the guitar” Seth Baccus

This classy single-cut was inspired by luthier Andy Manson’s Bluebird acoustic and originally aimed to merge a Telecaster with a Les Paul

The tune-o-matic-style bridge is made in Germany by ABM. “They do it quite differently from a lot of companies,” says Seth. “The bridge is milled out of aluminium rather than being cast”

1 “I’ve used Bare Knuckle pickups on the majority of my guitars,” says Seth. “I took them on when I was working at Mansons; I think I was only their second or third dealer. It was like taking the cotton wool out of your ears: so clean and harmonically sparkly compared with what I was used to”