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.

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

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.