1) Lowden S25J - I must photograph it. The S25J is a nylon string, bridge pickup equipped version of the small body rosewood, cedar top Lowden with cutaway. It is fitted with a 14-fret neck in 48mm width, like a classical guitar, but cambered and with steel string type frets, and has a slotted headstock.
Here are two MP3 sound clips from my Lowden S25J nylon string, not using the pickup, but just played using a Minidisk recorder and mike, no EQ of FX. A short jazz bit, and a quick version on Last Rose of Summer. The stuff on the other guitars, below, has further RA sound clips. There are more sounds clips of stuff played on John Pearse Thomastik Folk strings on this guitar - special strings for stringing fragile instruments to sound like steel.
3) Lowden O-10 - I visited Pennsylvania and bought this used Lowden in the classic large, deep body size, mahogany and cedar specification from fellow Lowden discussion member Perry Jones. Here's a snap of myself (left) trying the guitar before handing over the dollars, and Perry playing his Lowden S25J Special Edition, a really nice nylon string spruce top instrument. I have fitted the O-10, which already had a 1991 Highlander type bridge pickup, with a Mini Flex condensor microphone inside the body, and a stereo jack out which terminates in XLR for the mike and a jack for the pickup. The sound from the Mini Flex is very natural indeed.
Update: the stereo jack out left the pickup batteries draining all the time. This caused so many problems that I have now added a second jack, just like the second one in my kit guitar below but gold finish to match the Lowden hardware. I now have two regular mono leads.
4) My self-build very high spec Martin kit, the likes of which you can no longer buy from Guitarmaker's Connection because all they do now is bog-standard dreadnought kits. This is a 0000 (M size) Grand Auditorium body, shallow depth, with rosewood sides, American coast redwood top (very thin, very 'live' and with unusual separation of tones), mahogany neck, ebony fingerboard and bridge, salmon skin pickguard and trim, sodalite gemstone K on headstock really badly inlaid by me, very finely shaped and polished nut and saddle. It has installed a Martin Thinlins Gold Plus active piezo pickup with enpin jack, plus on a second jack a Mimesis (now called Fishman) Rare Earth single coil magnetic pickup neatly fitted in the soundhole. The guitar is naturally finished using a sealant coat of button polish (French shellac polish), without using grain stopper except on the neck, followed by hard carnuba wax lightly buffed. About twice a year the front gets rubbed down gently and a thin new layer of wax applied. The redwood is very soft indeed, and the front shows finger and strum marks. The guitar was played and appreciated by Duck Baker, and he signed it; the signature has been sealed under the wax, but has faded a little and needs care to protect it.
The main faults with this guitar are: a) the fingerboard falls away a little after the 14th fret because of Martin's instructions, which should not have been followed b) for the same reason the truss rod would be a little hard to get at easily as it's close to the top c) the binding is not deeply enough recessed as I was hesitant about cutting so much wood away, and is very thin in places (this could be corrected at a future date by removing the binding, deepening the recess and rebinding, preferably in something other than the plastic supplied which I used). The sides of the guitar had been pre-bent and partially made up by Martin and they are not dead flat (I think I got it because they rejected the parts). Similarly, the front though bookmatched is not dead symmetrical and shows bear-claw figures at slightly different distances in the lower bout.
The main benefits of this guitar is that it sounds better than anything I have ever played in terms of separation of notes and freedom from boom. My guitar has a unique interior tone bar shaping which permits the top to vibrate freely without weakening it - a simple idea which worked. It also has very high accuracy in the pitch of the first five frets, which is unusual in any guitar, and was achieved by shortening the fingerboard at the nut end by a fraction to compensate for my preference for almost-flat electric guitar style fret shaping. The overall result is a guitar which holds very precise fifths, octaves etc in all positions and can thus be tuned perfectly, which in turn creates strong sympathetic vibration in the strings. It sounds very exact and classical for fingerstyle playing. It also has a hand-carved neck which gets compliments from electric players, who normally say that it is the first acoustic strung with medium weights they have played and found as fast as an electric with lights. The piezo pickup is very strong on the bass, the magnetic on the highs, so used in stereo they give a very full sound - and both are preamped to need no DI box.
There are a couple of MP3 files from this guitar on the site.
But if only it wasn't made of soft wood with no hard lacquer on it!
