Richard Hoover and Santa Cruz Guitar Company have been pioneering some of the finest Dreadnoughts available on the market these days, and this Slope Shoulder with a 12-fret neck has got to be one of the finest examples of their work we’ve seen. To play this guitar, you’d hardly believe it was a Dreadnought, so rich and balanced is the voice, and how comfortable and intimate the instrument feels in your hands, thanks to the 12-fret neck and slinky low action.

With even a soft touch, this Santa Cruz lights up all across the fingerboard. These trebles are crystalline in their clearness, and offer a delicate panoply of overtones to your fingerstyle arrangements. Bass notes are full and resounding as they roll out of the Slope Shoulder body, but they retain a well-defined edge that keeps them balanced and distinct from the other registers. Despite its Dreadnought size, this guitar feels smaller, more inviting, and excellently set up for fingerpicking. Santa Cruz decided to pair a dark-grained set of Cocobolo Rosewood for the back and sides with a tight-grained German Spruce top, and what an excellent match! Like a good cabernet paired with fontina cheese, these woods give a rich and dynamic fundamental to the guitar’s voice. This Slope Shoulder is the first of five such Dreadnoughts that Santa Cruz built for the 2000 NAMM show, and you can tell: they pulled out all the stops, and spared no expense.

These days, parlor guitars are starting to experience the same degree of popularity they enjoyed in their heyday during the early 1900s, thanks to advancements in modern amplification technology and a folk and traditional music revival. Naturally, builders are also expanding their lineups to include smaller-bodied guitars for their rich tonality and comfortable playability. The Santa Cruz Guitar Company has been making parlor-size guitars for some time now, and this 2010 Style 1 Custom is an excellent example of their work. Featuring a seductively figured Brazilian Rosewood back and sides and Italian Spruce top, sparkling Abalone flowerpot inlay and MOP snowflakes, and Brazilian Rosewood bindings, you’d be hard-pressed to find another parlor in this price range that looks (and sounds) so beautiful. All that Brazilian lends this guitar a rich and dynamic range, and when paired with the Italian Spruce’s drive, creates a voice with big-bodied sustain. Santa Cruz has given this Style 1 a soft-V neck for vintage appeal and easy fretting, and the 12-fret design makes the strings expressive but not overly tight. Whether it’s for American Traditional fingerpicking or Open D Blues, this Style 1 is a powerful instrument that’s hard to put down.

Boy, this little number is a livewire. We don’t know what kind of magic James Russell and Eric Schoenberg worked on this Schoenberg Stella model from 2013, but it must have been a heady brew. Loud, energetic, crisp and defined! Are the words that first come to mind. It’s a fantastic fingerpicking guitar, hands down. Carpathian Spruce on top with Madagascar Rosewood back and sides, 12 frets to the neck and a venetian cutaway, and a slick setup for easy playability. Part of what’s going on here is a build that takes a nod from a 1920s Oscar Schmidt Stella: the sides are more shallow than you’d expect, and that creates a fast response. Take this Stella model down into Open G, and it maintains that quickness and crunchy clarity. This guitar has us impressed, very impressed.

Other keywords: 12-fret, 00, parlor guitar, fingerstyle, waverly, pyramid bridge

Several powerhouse names came together on this one from 2006. Eric Schoenberg paired up with Victoria, B.C.’s Robert Anderson to build this 000 Standard Marty Evans model–European Spruce & Brazilian Rosewood, 12 frets to the neck and style-40 Abalone trim. The instrument is French Polished for maximum resonance with a soft V neck and wide, comfortable 1 25/32” nut for an effortless fingerpicking experience. Maple bindings and Waverly tuners round out the package.
The voice is characterized by a clean and even response across the registers, and more projection and sustain than we expected from a 000-sized flattop. It very much holds its own in Standard as well as altered tunings.

Other keywords: signature guitar, ooo, 12-fret, brw, calton

Mike Byle, veteran of the guitar building world, has implemented decades of practice and experimentation in his new line of personal instruments under the label Sifel Creek Guitars, and we couldn’t be happier with the results! This 000-12 Fret has an easy richness across all the registers which translates into lush arrangements for fingerstyle and fat, juicy solos with a flatpick.

Cocobolo is always gorgeous, but the set for this back and sides is another order of magnitude, and is offset by curly Koa bindings and a celtic knot inlaid into the heel cap. For the Tunnel 13 Redwood top, Mike added an ultra-thin lamination of Spruce to strengthen the Redwood and allow the braces to be measureably lighter–the result is a Redwood top which approaches Spruce in its projection! Add to that a 12-fret neck for even more warmth, and you’re looking at an instrument which plays effortlessly and with a knack for dynamic, full technicolor arrangements.

One of the guys here had to stop playing this guitar when his hands started shaking: the response of this Double Decker is siesmic. Stefan Sobell makes an incredible guitar these days, and it’s obvious from guitars like this big boy from 1993 that he’s had his master’s touch for an incredibly long time.

This is the sort of guitar which, when played, can reduce a player to monosyllabic sentences. It’s hard to say anything more complex than, “Woah,” after you’ve experienced the sheer complexity of this guitar’s voice. The Mahogany neck features Sobell’s flattened C profile (slim and slick) and meets the body at the 12th fret, increasing the warmth of the mids and moving the bridge further down from the soundhole in order to better active the German Spruce top. The Brazilian Rosewood back and sides feature dramatic, twisting grain patterns and are still stable and crack free after 25 years of music.

The setup threads the needle for both fingerstyle and flatpicking, especially if you like going into dropped tunings. Just strum an open chord, and you’ll be amazed at the sheer volume of this Double Decker. The velvet-rich bass response pairs with sweet, fat trebles—and even when you dig in with aggressive attack the voice remains articulate and defined.

The Double Decker is a force of nature, plain and simple.