 | Download Example 1 Flatpicking, standard tuning |
| Download Example 2 Fingerstyle, DADGAD |
| Download Example 3 Capo |
I talked to "Crazy Pete" Newport, Breedlove's president, about the concept behind the new Oregon-based Custom Shop and the company's new American Standard Series. "Three or four years ago that guitar cost around $3000," he told me. "When the economy went down, a lot of craftsmen in our area were out of work, so we decided we were going to do something to address that. We ended up turning the factory inside out. These are the only guitars in the country that are made 100% in the US, fully customizable, and made of highest quality woods at this price [$999 street]. How long can we do that? We put a lot of fine craftsmen to work, and we're going to try to make it last as long as we can, but we're kind of taking the world by storm at this point. We've been out of reach for a lot of folks, but now we're really looking for more friends." In other words, get 'em while they're hot.
She's a Brick House
Our review guitar, the C20/SM, is from the American Series, entirely handmade in the 40-person Breedlove Custom Shop in Bend, Oregon, and sticks to the very familiar modified hourglass we know and love so well. It has a concert-size body with solid mahogany back and sides, and a hand voiced, graduated Sitka spruce top. The guitar is pleasing to the eye, as well as extremely comfortable to hold. The one-piece mahogany neck is also comfortable with a 1-3/4" nut and a 25-1/2" scale length. The action is low, fast, clean, and fingerstyle friendly. The C20/SM has a pinless rosewood bridge, and like all Breedloves, comes standard with the JLD Bridge Truss System.
The ornamentation is plain and simple, and makes this already attractive guitar a stunner. The black body binding, abalone rosette, and clean, simple position markers are just right, and the asymmetrical headstock with rosewood overlay and Gotoh 381 tuners caps it off with customary Breedlove flair. The three asymmetrical elements—headstock, fretboard markers and bridge shape—work together perfectly to make this guitar a standout. A deluxe hardshell case is included, as well as Breedlove's Lifetime Warranty, adding up to a heck of a deal. More compelling still, the C20 doesn't feel at all like a "budget" guitar.
The Breedlove You Know
Breedlove's original sound comes, in part, from four sources. Newport explains that the Breedlove four-stage system starts with the neck. "We've changed the neck angle to kick back about one degree more, so you get nice low action but you're also getting more power to drive the top. So you've got the neck angle, the pinless bridge with the bridge truss as reinforcement, and then we really control how that energy gets released to the top, back, and sides by tweaking the bracing and graduating the tops. All those things working together led to the original Breedlove sound."
Breedlove graduates the tops by making them around .010" to .015" thinner than conventional tops on the bass side, and that much thicker on the treble side. "You really end up with a broad voice for each guitar, and a nice note balance up the neck and across the strings," says Newport. By reinforcing the bridge with the Bridge Truss System, Breedlove ended up with a stronger anchor point over the saddle. According to Newport, "The strings end up vibrating longer, which generates more sustain and allows more time to energize the top. This creates a nice bloom of tone. We call it the Breedlove Original Sound, or Complex Sustain."
The aforementioned pinless bridge is a JLD Bridge Truss System. JLD got started with their Bridge Doctor, a solution for stabilizing tops that have begun to collapse in front of the bridge. The folks at JLD noticed that installing their device altered a guitar's tone. The instrument sounded louder, bigger, and more brilliant, and developed more sustain, so they approached luthiers about installing the Bridge Doctor in new guitars as a way of enhancing their sound, as well as preventing those guitar beer bellies.
Breedlove was a very early adopter of the JDL Bridge Truss. Back in the early '90s, Breedlove was the repair center for Taylor, and got to see first hand how abused guitars could be restored and returned to full usefulness. "So, we played with it, continued to modify the guitar design to take advantage of that bridge truss, and it's become one of four major tonal attributes to the tops of our guitars," explains Newport.
Play that Thang
The C20 is a lively sounding little thing, brilliant as well as rich. It sounds great. In open tunings this guitar really sizzles, and it will drop down to a C-tuning without breaking a sweat, thanks to that nice long scale length. The tone has all the stuff you want: warmth, richness, clarity, and character. You can tell the woods are all solid, all high quality, and you can really hear the care and love that went into building this guitar.
There is a "but" here, though I'm not sure it's a bad thing. The treble really jumps out at you. I mean really jumps out at you. Like, "Holy moly, that's got high-end happening." It's not unpleasant, but wow, it's in-your-face on the treble side. And again, it's a great sounding guitar, and I'm not even remotely suggesting that it doesn't have bass, because it does. I mentioned that to Newport, and he said that it's likely I'm the first person to play that guitar, besides the folks doing the setup, so it's simply that brand-spanking newness I'm hearing. After a few days the treble will become more integrated into the overall sound. Using a capo seemed to balance out the high end, and didn't cause the guitar to choke.
The Final Mojo
Breedlove guitars are beautiful works of art, and the C20/SM offers extremely high value for the dollar. Elegant looking and easy to play, this brilliant sounding guitar is a solid contender in the new push for lower cost, high quality, professional-class instruments. Newport informed me that you can get an LR Baggs Active Element pickup installed for $200 more, and that makes the C20/SM a stage-stealer.
Buy if...
you want a brilliant sounding, professionally voiced, handmade guitar that doesn't feel, play, or sound "budget friendly," but is.
Skip if...
you love the darker side of the acoustic spectrum.
Rating...
Street $999 - Breedlove Guitars - breedlovemusic.com |
Onstage, Tommy Emmanuel executes a move that is not from the playbook of his hero, Chet Atkins.
“My biggest decision every day on tour is, ‘What do I want to start with? How do I want to come out of the gate?’” Emmanuel explains to me over a video call. “A good opener has to have everything. It has to be full of surprise, it has to have lots of good ideas, lots of light and shade, and then, hit it again,” he says, illustrating each phrase with his hands and ending with a punch.“You lift off straightaway with the first song, you get airborne, you start reaching, and then it’s time to level out and take people on a journey.”
In May 2023, Emmanuel played two shows at the Sydney Opera House, the best performances from which have been combined on his new release, Live at the Sydney Opera House. The venue’s Concert Hall, which has a capacity of 2,679, is a familiar room for Emmanuel, but I think at this point in his career he wouldn’t bring a setlist if he was playing Wembley Stadium. On the recording, Emmanuel’s mind-blowingly dexterous chops, distinctive attack and flair, and knack for culturally resonant compositions are on full display. His opening song for the shows? An original, “Countrywide,” with a segue into Chet Atkins’ “El Vaquero.”
“When I was going to high school in the ’60s, I heard ‘El Vaquero’ on Chet Atkins’ record, [1964’s My Favorite Guitars],” Emmanuel shares. “And when I wrote ‘Countrywide’ in around ’76 or ’77, I suddenly realized, ‘Ah! It’s a bit like “El Vaquero!”’ So I then worked out ‘El Vaquero’ as a solo piece, because it wasn’t recorded like that [by Atkins originally].
“The co-writer of ‘El Vaquero’ is Wayne Moss, who’s a famous Nashville session guy who played ‘da da da’ [sings the guitar riff from Roy Orbison’s ‘Pretty Woman’]. And he played on a lot of Chet’s records as a rhythm guy. So once when I played ‘El Vaquero’ live, Wayne Moss came up to me and said, ‘You know, you did my part and Chet’s at the same time. That’s not fair!’” Emmanuel says, laughing.
Atkins is the reason Emmanuel got into performing. His mother had been teaching him rhythm guitar for a couple years when he heard Atkins on the radio and, at 6, was able to immediately mimic his fingerpicking technique. His father recognized Emmanuel’s prodigious talent and got him on the road that year, which kicked off his professional career. He says, “By the time I was 6, I was already sleep-deprived, working too hard, and being forced to be educated. Because all I was interested in was playing music.”
Emmanuel talks about Atkins as if the way he viewed him as a boy hasn’t changed. The title Atkins bestowed upon him, C.G.P. (Certified Guitar Player), appears on Emmanuel’s album covers, in his record label (C.G.P. Sounds), and is inlaid at the 12th fret on his Maton Custom Shop TE Personal signature acoustic. (Atkins named only five guitarists C.G.P.s. The others are John Knowles, Steve Wariner, Jerry Reed, and Atkins himself.) For Emmanuel, even today most roads lead to Atkins.
When I ask Emmanuel about his approach to arranging for solo acoustic guitar, he says, “It was really hit home for me by my hero, Chet Atkins, when I read an interview with him a long time ago and he said, ‘Make your arrangement interesting.’ And I thought, ‘Wow!’ Because I was so keen to be true to the composer and play the song as everyone knows it. But then again, I’m recreating it like everyone else has, and I might as well get in line with the rest of them and jump off the cliff into nowhere. So it struck me: ‘How can I make my arrangements interesting?’ Well, make them full of surprises.”
When Emmanuel was invited to contribute to 2015’s Burt Bacharach: This Guitar’s in Love with You, featuring acoustic-guitar tributes to Bacharach’s classic compositions by various artists, Emmanuel expresses that nobody wanted to take “(They Long to Be) Close to You,” due to its “syrupy” nature. But for Emmanuel, this presented an entertaining challenge.
He explains, “I thought, ‘Okay, how can I reboot “Close to You?’ So even the most jaded listener will say, ‘Holy fuck—I didn’t expect that! Wow, I really like that; that is a good melody!’ So I found a good key to play the song in, which allowed me to get some open notes that sustain while I move the chords. Then what I did is, in every phrase, I made the chord unresolve, then resolve.
Tommy Emmanuel's Gear
“I’m writing music for the film that’s in my head,” Emmanuel says. “So, I don’t think, ‘I’m just the guitar,’ ever.”
Photo by Simone Cecchetti
Guitars
- Three Maton Custom Shop TE Personals, each with an AP5 PRO pickup system
Amps
- Udo Roesner Da Capo 75
Effects
- AER Pocket Tools preamp
Strings & Picks
- Martin TE Signature Phosphor Bronze (.012–.054)
- Martin SP strings
- Ernie Ball Paradigm strings
- D’Andrea Pro Plec 1.5 mm
- Dunlop medium thumbpicks
“And then to really put the nail in the coffin, at the end, ‘Close to you’ [sings melody]. I finished on a major 9 chord which had that note in it, but it wasn’t the key the song was in, which is a typical Stevie Wonder trick. All the tricks I know, the wonderful ideas that I’ve stolen, are from Michael Jackson, Stevie Wonder, Lionel Richie, James Taylor, Carole King, Neil Diamond. All of the people who wrote really incredibly great pop songs and R&B music—I stole every idea I could, and I tried to make my little two-and-a -half minutes as interesting and entertaining as possible. Because entertainment equals: Surprise me.”
I share with Emmanuel that the performances on Live at the Sydney Opera House, which include his popular “Beatles Medley,” reminded me of another possible arrangement trick. In Harpo Marx’s autobiography, Harpo Speaks, I preface, Marx writes of a lesson he learned as a performer—to “answer the audience’s questions.” (Emmanuel says he’s a big fan of the book and read it in the early ’70s.) That happened for me while listening to the medley, when, after sampling melodies from “She’s a Woman” and “Please Please Me,” Emmanuel suddenly lands on “While My Guitar Gently Weeps.”
I say, “I’m waiting for something that hits more recognizably to me, and when ‘While My Guitar’ comes in, that’s like answering my question.”
“It’s also Paul and John, Paul and John, George,” Emmanuel replies. “You think, ‘That’s great, that’s great pop music,’ then, ‘Wow! Look at the depth of this.’”
Often Emmanuel’s flights on his acoustic guitar are seemingly superhuman—as well as supremely entertaining.
Photo by Ekaterina Gorbacheva
A trick I like to employ as a writer, I say to Emmanuel, is that when I’m describing something, I’ll provide the reader with just enough context so that they can complete the thought on their own.
“You can do that musically as well,” says Emmanuel. He explains how, in his arrangement of “What a Wonderful World,” he’ll play only the vocal melody. “When people are asking me at a workshop, ‘How come you don’t put chords behind that part?’ I say, ‘I’m drawing the melody and you’re putting in all the background in your head. I don’t need to tell you what the chords are. You already know what the chords are.’”
“Wayne Moss came up to me and said, ‘You know, you did my part and Chet’s at the same time. That’s not fair!’”
Another track featured on Live at the Sydney Opera House is a cover of Paul Simon’s “American Tune” (which Emmanuel then jumps into an adaptation of the Australian bush ballad, “Waltzing Matilda”). It’s been a while since I really spent time with There GoesRhymin’ Simon (on which “American Tune” was first released), and yet it sounded so familiar to me. A little digging revealed that its melody is based on the 17th-century Christian hymn, “O Sacred Head, Now Wounded,” which was arranged and repurposed by Bach in a few of the composer’s works. The cross-chronological and genre-lackadaisical intersections that come up in popular music sometimes is fascinating.
“I think the principle right there,” Emmanuel muses, “is people like Bach and Beethoven and Mozart found the right language to touch the heart of a human being through their ears and through their senses ... that really did something to them deep in their soul. They found a way with the right chords and the right notes, somehow. It could be as primitive as that.
Tommy Emmanuel has been on the road as a performing guitarist for 64 years. Eat your heart out, Bob Dylan.
Photo by Jan Anderson
“It’s like when you’re a young composer and someone tells you, ‘Have a listen to Elton John’s “Candle in the Wind,”’ he continues. “‘Listen to how those notes work with those chords.’ And every time you hear it, you go, ‘Why does it touch me like that? Why do I feel this way when I hear those chords—those notes against those chords?’ I say, it’s just human nature. Then you wanna go, ‘How can I do that!’” he concludes with a grin.
“You draw from such a variety of genres in your arrangements,” I posit. “Do you try to lean into the side of converting those songs to solo acoustic guitar, or the side of bridging the genre’s culture to that of your audience?”
“I stole every idea I could, and I tried to make my little two-and-a-half minutes as interesting and entertaining as possible. Because entertainment equals: Surprise me.”
“If I was a method actor,” Emmanuel explains, “what I’m doing is—I’m writing music for the film that’s in my head. So, I don’t think, ‘I’m just the guitar,’ ever. I always think it has to have that kind of orchestral, not grandeur, but … palette to it. Because of the influence of Stevie Wonder, Billy Joel, and Elton John, especially—the piano guys—I try to use piano ideas, like putting the third in the low bass a lot, because guitar players don’t necessarily do that. And I try to always do something that makes what I do different.
“I want to be different and recognizable,” he continues. “I remember when people talked about how some players—you just hear one note and you go, ‘Oh, that’s Chet Atkins.’ And it hit me like a train, the reason why a guy like Hank Marvin, the lead guitar player from the Shadows.... I can tell you: He had a tone that I hear in other players now. Everyone copied him—they just don’t know it—including Mark Knopfler, Eric Clapton, Jimmy Page, all those people. I got him up to play with me a few times when he moved to Australia, and even playing acoustic, he still had that sound. I don’t know how he did it, but it was him. He invented himself.”
YouTube It
Emmanuel performs his arrangement of “What a Wonderful World,” illustrating how omitting a harmonic backdrop can have a more powerful effect, especially when playing such a well-known melody.
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