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When Paul Woolson built this guitar, he put a check next to every option on the list! We’re looking at a 2010 DM-6 all-Mahogany OM with: Mahogany double top, soundport, demi cutaway, elevated fingerboard, armrest, and K&K Pure Mini, which is quite a mouth full. Add all of these features up, and you’ve got a fabulously well-balanced instrument in your hands that’s perfect for, well, everything!

With the shorter scale length (at 25 inches), fingerstyle arrangements are effortless to pull off (or hammer on), and we found that everything from Jazz and Country to tunes from the CandyRat repertoire sounded even, rich, and clear. With the soundport, you’ve got all that sweet tone projected right to your ears, and the raised fretboard extension and demi cutaway help to make the entire fretboard accessible for your fretting pleasure.

Hot off the bench, this 2016 S16J from Randy Muth is a firecracker beneath your fingertips, offering an expressive voice that never loses its cool and sustain that’ll hang around so long you ought to charge it for rent. Of course, this guitar has a gorgeous set of Brazilian Rosewood for the back and sides with dramatic rippling figure, and a European Spruce top (itself delicately bearclaw-figured), so be prepared for that inevitable moment when you find yourself staring, rather than playing, this beauty.

The voice is one smooth operator, with a surgically-precise balance across the strings that really allows your fingerstyle arrangements room to breathe–and this balance is maintained no matter what altered tuning you throw its way. Muth added a soundport to the upper bout, and an arm rest bevel to the lower, for player comfort, and supplied the left hand with a Venetian Cutaway to easily access all of the Ebony-bound fretboard.

One peek through the soundport, and you’ll spy Randy’s “XTF” bracing scheme, a hybrid of Classical and Steel String bracing designs that, in his words, enhances the “expression of the tripole vibration mode typically found in nylong string guitars…[which] helps provide power to the trebles and higher harmonics.” Wrapped up in an Ameritage hardshell case, this S16J is poised to take over your collection–care to give it a go?

One of those rare guitars which looks as good as it sounds, this 2008 Manzer, adorned with Canadian animals inlaid across the fretboard and Manzer’s trademark wood-and-Abalone rosette, makes the business of making music one that is as pleasing to the ear as it is to the eye. For the back and sides, Linda used some of the finest Indian Rosewood we’ve ever seen, bent into her tradmarked Manzer Wedge shape for playing comfort, and paired it with a German Spruce top that has striking contrasts of color across its medullary rays.

As you’d expect, the resulting voice is equally at home with a delicate attack or played with gusto, offering a well-balanced tone in all applications that is chock full of delightful overtones and articulate warmth. The trebles have an extra dose of clarity to them as well, but don’t overwhelm the other registers, instead providing an invigorating sparkle to the voice. After Manzer built the original Endangered Animals Manzer (which resides in the Canadian Museum of Civilization), she discovered a great fondness for this style of inlay, and has since made a select handful of guitars whose fretboards glitter with various animals, not all on the endangered list, of the Canadian wilderness.

Here, you can see a Dawson caribou, racoon, bears, and even an eastern cougar. Lastly, when you’d like to show off these handsome assemblages of Paua, Abalone, and Copper, you can do so at your next gig, utilizing the included Fishman Thinline undersaddle pickup for reliable amplification, and there’s an included Calton Flight Case to make sure it survives the trip.

In our experience, Michi Matsuda is one of the finest artists working in lutherie today, and it is always a sincere pleasure to have his instruments in the shop. Today we’ve got one of his M1 models from 2005 decked out in African Blackwood and Adirondack Spruce, and man-oh-man can it sing.

Something about the African Blackwood seems to help open up the middle registers and buff the bass notes until they shine, and with a fabulously tight-grained Adirondack Spruce top, the voice is rich and enveloping, expertly balanced. One of the ultimate fingerstyle guitars, this Matsuda M1 exudes an easy complexity with each note that mirrors the sensation of floating in the ocean, weightless, making it easy to lose track of time and of yourself while playing. The subtly-sunburst Mahogany neck features a wide nut at 1 15/16″ which provides wonderful string spacing for complex chords and allows you to better appreciate the precision with which each string rings.

Are you a fingerstylist? Please: do yourself a favor and take this Matsuda for a spin.

2005 must have been a good year for Michael Keller, because this 2005 Jumbo with flamed Koa and Engelmann Spruce is a firecracker (or should we say mortar shell?) of a guitar! The bass is pronounced, but with a well-defined edge that keeps this Jumbo from sounding muddy, and the trebles are strong without being shrill, which allow this guitar to work well for both fingerstyle and flatpicking approaches, and performs best with a medium to aggressive attack to really set the Engelmann Spruce top singing.

With the added soundport on the upper bout, this Keller’s huge voice is also directed straight to your ear to make this a great choice for loud venues or sessions–not to mention the pride you’ll feel as you show off the well-executed Abalone inlay across the body and neck. For a player seeking a slim nut, this Jumbo offers that in combination with a low/medium C profile neck for comfortable fretting work, and the setup is glass-smooth. Michael Keller’s one of the greats when it comes to Jumbos; do yourself a favor and try this big boy on for size.