High-end acoustics on parade

I’ve just come across a very helpful guy named Ken Totushek. Ken is an amateur guitarist who has a recording studio in his home and has somehow arranged his life so that lots of exquisite acoustic guitars have passed through it. He has done us the favor of recording these guitars and posting sound files on his web site, www.graceworksmusic.com.
 
Ken seems to be a big fan of old Martins. Among the guitars he’s recorded are a 1905 1-21; a 1905 0-28; a 1919 00-18; a 1930 00-40H converted from Hawaiian style to Spanish; and a 1913 0-42. (This guy is living right.) The contemporary luthiers represented include Kevin Ryan, James Olson, David Eichelbaum, Gerald Sheppard, Huss and Dalton, Alan Carruth, and Charlie Hoffman. He slips a Santa Cruz and a Bourgeois in, too.

For each guitar he records two or three short (1 – 2 minutes) takes, using the same mic set-up and the same three pieces. He presents them so that you can, if you want, select the guitar you want to hear and then go hear it, but what he really wants you to do is more the blindfold-test type of thing: listen first, without knowing which guitar is which.

 A few things jumped out at me when I tried this:

• The new guitars sound every bit as good as the old guitars.
• I’m used to thinking that you need medium-to-heavy gauge strings to get enough sound out of a guitar, but a lot of these are strung with lights and they ring all day long.
• To my ear, all the new ones are trying to sound like Martins, which is OK with me, but it makes me wonder what else is out there. Maybe that’s just Ken’s personal taste.

In the end I picked the Martin 1930 00-40H conversion as my personal choice. (I’ll drop by on the weekend, Ken – have it ready to go for me.) The sad truth, though, or one of them, is that with a guitar like this very few people can tell the difference between a great one and an incredible one. You will never be able to explain to your significant other why a 00-40H is worth more than a D-28, or vice versa, or why either of them is worth more than a small car. “Wow,” he/she will say. “That sounds nice. And the wood is so pretty.”

The only ones who will really know will be you, me and Ken.