Finding The Right One
Editor-in-chief Jamie Dickson goes on the hunt for a ‘just right’ acoustic in the leafy suburbs of London
Colour me hypocritical, but I’ve all too often ignored the advice I’ve given to readers in these pages, namely: always try a guitar in person before you buy it, if possible. Anything less and it’s a roll of the dice whether you’ll click with the guitar you’ve bought sight unseen. And so it proved to be when I bought a Martin DR Centennial online from Coda Music in Stevenage recently. Let me start by saying that Coda’s service was amazing, and the used DR Centennial I bought from them was in beautiful condition and perfectly set up. And in many ways it was a great buy – a pukka rosewood dreadnought by Martin with some very nice added extras, including an Adirondack Spruce top, plus vintage-style forwardshifted bracing. Its top had also received the VTS (Vintage Tone System) torrefying treatment normally reserved for Martin’s top-end vintage reissues. It was a great guitar, very playable, too.
Nonetheless, within a few weeks I began to wonder if it really was quite the right guitar for me. I play a lot of fingerstyle with a European folk influence, whereas the DR Centennial was a real flat-picker’s delight: an unabashed cannon that came most vividly to life when played with a pick and its sound has strong Americana vibes. I really liked it, but as I made preparations to record a fingerstyle album in a very different style I began to wonder if the DR would be a square peg in a round hole on such a recording?
A trip round to Guitarist contributor Rod Brakes’ house made my mind up. Rod has a lovely late-50s Martin 0-18, a relatively small guitar that is a natural fit for fingerstyle. All the pieces I wanted to play on my recording sounded instantly great on it – and I was forced to conclude it was just better adapted to the kind of playing I wanted to do than the bold, bull-hearted DR Centennial I’d bought online.
Trading Places
After a little bit of soul-searching, I realised what I had to do. For a few years now, I’ve been following the comings and goings at a specialist retailer called Glenn’s Guitars in Enfield, North London. Owned and run by ex-Denmark Street guitar trader Glenn Sinnock, the company’s website explains that it was set up as the opposite of the high-pressure selling style encountered in some citycentre guitar shops, offering a quiet, leisurely listening environment in which to test out dozens of eclectic, interesting guitars. And while Glenn does have one or two electrics and pickup-equipped archtops on offer, the main focus of the business is flat-top acoustics, both vintage and modern. After a quick chat with Glenn, in which he confirmed he might be able to take the DR Centennial as a trade-in, I decided to hop in the car and see if I could find the ideal companion for my fingerstyle acoustic adventures.
Arriving at Glenn’s house in a leafy suburb, he showed me to his listening room, where he’d already pulled out a few guitars he reckoned might suit my needs and that I could try for starters. There was a lovely 2015 Martin Custom Shop 0-18; a 2009 Martin SWOM GT, a really sweet little OM-style acoustic with a Sitka top and cherry wood back and sides; a standard 90s-era Martin 0-18; and, finally, a crisply turned out, nearly new Martin 000-12E with an attractive koa veneer over its mahogany body.
Glenn put the kettle on while I got to grips with this initial selection, swiftly finding that the SWOM GT – a guitar that had previously gone under my radar – was an absolute delight, instantly feeling like an old friend and very easygoing to play and listen to, making it the first guitar to go on the shortlist. The 2019 000-12E played like butter, but its whole vibe was quite shiny and new and I realised that I really wanted something with a bit of worn-in character, a guitar that felt like it already had a few stories under its belt. That said, the pristine 12-fret Martin Custom Shop 0-18 was a serious head-turner, with a poised, elegantly rounded voice and beautiful craftsmanship. It was so hard to put down. So while it was at the top of my budget range, I knew it, too, had to go on the shortlist. The standard 0-18 was very nice, but for whatever reason it didn’t speak to me the way the SWOM GT and the Custom Shop 0-18 did, so I played it and put it back in its case, happy to leave it for another buyer or another day.
Tea Party
With this little batch of guitars auditioned it was time for more tea, and the obliging Glenn told me a little about himself and the business, explaining that focusing exclusively on acoustic guitars had worked out really well – though some of his friends from the trade had been sceptical when he’d first set it up. Quality acoustics remain his ruling passion, and the sheer variety of interesting guitars he holds in stock draws visitors from all over
Europe to his door. The relaxed, friendly atmosphere and comfortable listening room were added bonuses and, to me, really underscored the value of being able to invest some time getting your hands on a broad selection of instruments before buying.
Tea drunk, I was keen to audition some more obscure vintage and modern acoustics alongside the Martin classics I’d already tried, to make sure I wasn’t missing an unexpected gem. Glenn told me that vintage Gibsons are his thing so, next, he recommended that I try a beautiful old 1935 Kalamazoo KG-11. Built during the Great Depression, on the same factory line as Gibson’s mainstream instruments, the Adirondack-topped KG-11 is reckoned to be a surprisingly good match for modern fingerpickers, despite its age. Picking it up for the first time, I found it light as a feather, while the super-chunky pre-war neck was surprisingly comfortable in the palm. Picking out a few chords, I revelled in its old-yet-characterful voice – jankier and bluesier, perhaps, than a modern X-braced guitar of the same size, each note evoked the many smoky juke-joint sessions the guitar must have played down the decades. Though it was not at all what I thought I was looking for, the Kalamazoo went straight onto the shortlist – it was just so engaging and different and charming to play that it made me rethink what I wanted.
Learning Experience
So what did I learn from this experience? Well, several things. First, even very good guitars, such as the DR Centennial, can prove to be not quite right for one’s own personal playing style in the end. Second, the experience proved the worth of specialist retailers, especially those who have the space and time to let you try a lot of relevant guitars out in a good listening environment so you can feel confident there wasn’t a ‘one that got away’ among the guitars on offer, simply because you got to try them all. Third, the experience reminded me to be open-minded and try unexpected things more often.
I very nearly came away with the 30s Kalamazoo, and while I’m going to now have a think about what I played on the day and what I will eventually choose to replace the DR Centennial, it’s going to be one of the instruments I tried out there, in the old-fashioned way – after listening and auditioning without hurry or stress, with plenty of guitars on hand to try, expanding one’s own acoustic horizons even as you look for a perfect companion. I’ll let you know in a future issue what I decide…
www.glennsguitars.com
“I revelled in the KG-11’s old-yet-characterful voice – each note evoked the smoky juke-joint sessions the guitar must have played”