Saturday, July 6, 2013

Augustino Guitar




Today we look at the Augustino Loprinzi guitar. This is an AR-38. It's spruce topped with rosewood back and sides. They are all solid woods. The guitar has a thin almost electric guitar feeling neck. It is a joy to play. This is a hand made guitar. It was built in Clearwater, Florida. It is an early Florida guitar since it has the old style headstock (non-original tuner keys) and label (signed by "Augie").

The sound is rich with overtones. Fingerpicked, it has the mellow sound that you would expect from a rosewood guitar. Each note is rich in nuance. Flatpicking single notes delivers the same rich goodness. The guitar projects very well into a room. If there is a downside, it would be that when strumming vigorously the overtones can overpower the sound. I adjust my playing accordingly, letting each note sing it's song. The chocolaty goodness and playability of this guitar makes it very hard to put down. This is a winner , no doubt. 

Friday, July 5, 2013

Tetomas guitar


Hey. My first post is on the Tetomas guitar. This basically a Japanese dreadnaught knock off. The lower bout is 15 and a half inches across.  The scale length is 25.5.  The neck is a very comfortable slight "V" shape. The label on this one says model W140. I have no idea when this was made. I acquired it in 1980 and it looked pretty well used by then. It looks like a spruce top and mahogany back. I can not tell if these are solid woods or not. The tone is bright and the guitar projects well. It's not a beautiful finger picking sound, but for campfire jams, it's more than adequate. I played some last night at a gathering and people complimented the sound.