Most of my hand crafted guitars are patterned after 12-fret prewar Martin rosewood models — although I have also made mahogany and 14-fret guitars. Early on, I even made a couple of prewar Gibon style guitars — a maple Jumbo and a Honduran rosewood AJ. The 12-fret prewar Martin style guitars — 00, 000, and dreadnoughts are gaining in popularity: they are hard to find, but they have great tone and projection, and are fun to play. Good ones — vintage and replicas with good materials — are pretty pricey (except here!).
12-fret guitars are not necessarily finger style guitars; the original D-18 and D-28 (introduced in 1931) were 12-fret slope shoulder D guitars, even though they were usually played with a pick. Even Gene Autry's famous 1933 D-45 was a 12-fret slope shoulder dreadnought. In 1934, Martin redesigned several of their guitars, including the dreadnought, as 14-fret guitars with a slightly smaller body and squared shoulders. The 00-21 seems to be the only steel string 12-fret Martin that remained in production after 1934, persevering until 1996. In the last decade or so, Martin has released several vintage models and special edition 12-fret guitars. Today, 1967 and earlier 00-21s are in high demand.
You can browse through Acoustic Guitar magazine (especially see the July 2005 and August 2002 issues) for the last few years to find some interesting articles about 12-fret guitars. Washburn and Johnson's Martin Guitars book describes the entire history of Martin guitars up until about 1996 — including the history of Martin 12-fret guitars along with the mainstream 14-fret guitars.
I keep a stock of rosewood for backs and sides — ranging across East Indian, Palo Escrito, Honduran, Madagascar, and Brazilian. But you can order mahogany, koa, maple or many other tonewoods for the back and sides. I have made tops from Sitka, Engelmann, Adirondack and Carpathian spruce, but you can order German/European spruce, cedar, redwood, koa, mahogany, ....
Take a look at the guitars, including what I currently have in stock, what I am currently building, and a gallery of all of the guitars that I have built (you can click on most small images to enlarge them for a closer look). Call or send email questions about any guitar in which you are interested. If you want to see more details before buying a guitar I have in stock, ask me for more images. If you want to talk about a custom guitar that exactly meets your desires, please contact me.
I am a fanatical, part time luthier (I still have a day job).
I built my first guitar from a kit in 2003.
Since then, the guitars has been built from scratch.
That is, other than tuners, bridge pins, and end pins,
I build the entire guitar from raw wood (without the aid of
numerical-control machined parts). No two guitars are exacty
alike.
I am still a novice, so the guitars are very low priced,
but built with quality materials.
While the fit and finish are not at the level of production guitars,
I have not yet had a customer who was not pleased with the guitar's
tone and volume.
|
Contact
nutt at gnutt.com
to find out more about my guitars.
303-818-4344 Boulder, Colorado |