We get some truly amazing instruments that pass through our showroom, but only a handful of those guitars hooks us with an emotional response. This 2003 Ryan Nightingale Grand Soloist is one of those few instruments which, from aesthetics to tone, pulls something out of the player that they didn’t know they had. Fingerstyle guitarists, we’re talking to you.
Providing a rich, full-figured presence from the bass strings to your arrangements, and pairing that with treble overtones like bells, this Indian Rosewood and Sitka Spruce Nightingale has the ability to transform the simple into the grand, and the epic into the elegant. Played in lowered tunings, you can feel the pulse of the low end thick in your gut, but the setup is so glass-smooth that the experience of playing this Ryan is an excercise in effortlessness. Each string is rendered in vibrant color, and is perfectly balanced with its neighbors, rendering the voice complex, but surgically balanced. Add an L.R. Baggs iBeam pickup to the mix, and a Calton flight case with Colorado Case Cover, and you’ll want for nothing. This, friends, is the sort of guitar you’ll carry with you for a lifetime.