Faith Lyra Cutaway Nylon-String Acoustic
NYLON-STRINGED ACOUSTIC/ELECTRIC GUITARS JUST GOT SERIOUS.
The folks at Faith Guitars make steel-string guitars. They make all kinds of steel-string guitars: dreadnoughts, OMs, jumbos, parlours… Even a 12-fret, sloped-shoulder dreadnought! They make steel-string guitars really, really well – they each have their own unique feature that sets them apart from the crowd, and they are all great performing guitars. So when Faith releases a nylon-string model, it’s worth taking a serious look to find out what makes this new guitar worthy of our attention. The Lyra Cutaway is the company’s first ever shot at a nylonstrung instrument, and it seems they are terribly serious about it.
The Faith Lyra Cutaway certainly has its own thing happening. From a distance, it looks like a glossy version of other “serious” classical guitars. Up close, it becomes apparent that some serious thought and experience has been involved in the design and manufacture of the Lyra. The materials are first class: a perfectly book-matched solid Red Cedar top, Solid
Rosewood back and sides, a Mahogany neck topped with a lightly figured Macassar Ebony fretboard and a Rosewood headstock overlay, a nicely figured Macassar Ebony bridge, Macassar Ebony body binding (front and back!), and an environmentally friendly Tusq nut and saddle set. The machine heads are traditional open geared tuners, but gold plated with pearloid buttons. All this is wrapped up in a faultless high gloss lacquer for the body and a very smooth satin finish for the neck.
The Lyra has an understated but classy soundhole rosette of Rosewood and Abalone. The neck joins the body at the 12th fret and, in keeping with contemporary thinking, that joint is a bolt-on design. If you ever wondered how effective a bolt-on acoustic neck can be, here’s the evidence. The fretboard is dot-free on the face but there are dots on the side at frets five, seven and nine. To simplify the gig, the Lyra has a Fishman Sonitone system: a dedicated nylon-string under-saddle pickup with a two-control preamp hidden away inside the soundhole. Through my Fishman Loudbox Artist, it sounded mighty. Fishman gear is brilliant, so the Sonitone system is a great choice for this guitar.
But what really makes the Lyra Cutaway stand out is the neck. The Lyra’s neck is somewhere between a traditional classical and a steelstring acoustic. Officially, the nut width is 48 millimetres (that’s three or four narrower than a standard classical) but that one dimension doesn’t tell the whole story. It’s the shape of the neck that is so inviting. It’s not deep and doesn’t have heavy shoulders that most classicals have, and it’s a smooth D-shaped profile and feels more like a slightly wider steel-string neck. In fact, it’s very similar to my old Martin D-12-20 (which is a touch wider still). Basically, there’s no girth to negotiate and the 25.5-inch scale is ever-so familiar. Also, there’s that butterysmooth satin finish – it looks satin but feels semi-gloss, allowing for an ease of movement that is uncommon for a nylon-string guitar. And that bolt-on issue? It’s immediately forgotten when you pick it up and feel the substance of its construction, and then start playing. The Lyra feels as solid as any dovetailed instrument and this provides a lot of confidence to the player (whether they know it or not). Moving from steel strings to nylon suddenly becomes as easy as from electric to acoustic.
The Lyra is a delightful fingerstyle guitar. The treble notes have a snappy delivery and an airy decay; the mids are warm without being muted; the bass is defined and articulate. In fact, the delivery is more like the immediacy of a flamenco guitar, but without the brassy attack and with much more sustain. Generally, the tone is round and full, with no latency in any frequency range. Notes bloom very quickly, whether played as single note lines or as chord clusters. This means that, whether played fast or slow, that broad tone is always there. Playing chords fingerstyle (arpeggiated) or strummed, each string is clearly defined right along the neck. Even above the seventh fret, there’s more sustain than expected and the treble notes don’t become muted through lack of mass.
The impeccable fretwork enables much of this and, of course, adds to the playing experience.
The Lyra Cutaway offers good bang-for-buck. The little details, some unseen, also contribute to the value: a two-way truss rod, scalloped bracing, the neck joint integrity, the deep cutaway. It all adds up to a considered approach to designing what is, essentially, a new take on a traditional instrument.