The first thing I noticed about the Breedlove Premier Concerto is how eminently playable it is. The neck is shallow, in a very good way, and it’s easy to play complex chord progressions and fast single-note runs, and to bend strings. And though the nut is a wide 1.75”—the specification preferred by most fingerstyle players—it feels almost like playing a nice electric guitar.
It sounds terrific, too: airy and resonant, with a cello-like richness on the low notes, not to mention a shimmering natural reverb. I’ve only played a few minutes—heck, I’m just two paragraphs into this review—and already I can tell that Breedlove, a company known for consistently refining its designs, has produced another winner.
High Profiling
The Premier is based on Breedlove’s Concerto body, which is 5” deep at the end block and 16” wide at the lower bout. The dimensions are engineered to deliver the booming sound of a dreadnought without sacrificing comfort. And, indeed, the Concerto feels great in both seated and standing positions.
The guitar is built around the classic combination of a solid Sitka spruce top, solid East Indian rosewood back and sides, and a Honduran mahogany neck. Breedlove also employs a practice called sound profiling when they select wood for a given guitar. It’s a combination of tapping and computer analysis that determines ideal tonewood thicknesses. It’s impossible to quantify the effects of this process as a player, but the projection and complexity of tone suggests it’s had a positive effect on the end product.
The luthiers at Breedlove’s Bend, Oregon, shop crafted the Premier Concerto with care. It’s spic-and-span, inside and out. The bracing and kerfing are smoothly shaped and sanded and precisely glued. The nut and saddle are both perfectly shaped and slotted, and the fretwork is smooth and tidy. The body’s thin finish is rubbed to a faultless gloss.
It’s a great-looking guitar. too. The top sports what Breedlove calls a copper sunburst finish, which is a warm brownish-orange at the edges and a lighter orange in the center. It contrasts nicely with the deep brown coloring of the rosewood back and sides, and the dark ebony fretboard and bridge. The appointments are few and very tasteful. Tortoise binding adds a subtle shimmer to the top and back of the body, while a simple shell rosette and dart-shaped fretboard inlays lend a dash of elegance.
Sounds for All Styles
The Premier Concerto is a superb fingerstyle instrument. It’s got an articulate, brilliant piano-like sound, and really seems to amplify nuances of picking-hand dynamics—which can be a good or bad thing, depending on the strength of your technique.
Ratings
Pros:
High-quality, versatile flattop with excellent playability and rich tones. Subdued but classy style.
Cons:
Factory setup is very good, but maybe not the best for a heavy strumming hand.
Tones:
Playability:
Build/Design:
Value:
Street:
$2,199
Breedlove Premier Concerto
breedlovemusic.com
I used it for arrangements of everything from a Scott Joplin rag to a Bach cello piece to Buck Curran’s “River Unto Sea.” In each case, I heard and felt consistent responsiveness from string to string and from the lowest fret to the highest, and notes cascaded together beautifully with an almost orchestral feel.
The Premier Concerto works just as well, for the most part, when played with a pick. For traditional approaches like Carter strumming, where the bass notes take on a melodic role, the guitar has great drive and definition. Better still, the low end doesn’t overwhelm the chordal accents, which can happen with a dreadnought and other big-bodied guitars.
Flat-picked, single-note lines sound great, too. The guitar has a fast response, and individual notes are full bodied. But when I really dig in with a heavy pick there’s just a hint of brittleness on the notes on the first string and a subtle amount of fret buzz on the low strings. These small idiosyncrasies are far from deal breakers, and in this case a setup more specifically tailored to heavy flatpicking would probably help enhance the resonance.
The Premier Concerto comes complete with onboard electronics in the form of L.R. Baggs’ Element Active System undersaddle pickup and preamp. It’s a low-profile, virtually invisible amplification system that doesn’t compromise the integrity of the guitar’s design. The battery pack is mounted on the neck block, well out of sight, and the tone and volume controls are inside the bass edge of the soundhole.
When I dialed the tone flat and plugged the Premier Concerto into an AER Compact 60/3 amp, the guitar sounded warm and lifelike. Its voice also paired nicely with a touch of reverb or chorus. This instrument is definitely gig ready.
The Verdict
With its beautiful design and execution, fine, versatile voice, and excellent playability, Breedlove’s Premier Concerto is a standout flattop by any standard. And at just over two grand with a deluxe hardshell case, the guitar is a good buy for an American-made, all-solid-wood guitar of such exceptional quality and design.
Watch the Review Demo:
![Jerry Cantrell Rig Rundown [2024]](https://www.premierguitar.com/media-library/youtube.jpg?id=53714787&width=600&height=600&quality=85&coordinates=0%2C0%2C560%2C0)
Diamond Pedals Dark Cloud
True to the Diamond design ethos of our dBBD’s hybrid analog architecture, Dark Cloud unlocks a new frontier in delay technology which was once deemed unobtainable by standard BBD circuit.
Powered by an embedded system, the Dark Cloud seamlessly blends input and output signals, crafting Tape, Harmonic, and Reverse delays with the organic warmth of analog companding and the meticulous precision of digital control.
Where analog warmth meets digital precision, the Dark Cloud redefines delay effects to create a pedal like no other
But by gosh, if delay—and its sister effect, reverb—haven’t always been perfect for the music I like to write and play. Which brings us to the Fishman EchoBack Mini Delay. The EchoBack, along with the standard delay controls of level, time, and repeats—as well as a tap tempo—has a toggle to alternate between analog, tape, and digital-delay voices.
I hooked up my Washburn Bella Tono Elegante to my Blues Junior to give the EchoBack a test run. We love a medium delay—my usual preference for delay settings is to have both level and repeats at 1 o’clock, and time at 11 o’clock. With the analog voice switched on, I heard some pillowy warmth in the processed signal, as well as a familiar degradation with each repeat—until their wake gave way to a gentle, distant, crinkly ticking. Staying on analog and adjusting delay time down to 8 o’clock and repeats to about 11:30, some cozy slapback enveloped my rendition of Johnny Marr’s part to “Back to the Old House,” conjuring up thoughts of Elvis trapped in a small chamber, but in a good way. It sounded indubitably authentic. The one drawback of analog delay for me, generally, is that its roundness can feel a bit under water at times.
Switching over to tape, that pillowy warmth evaporated, and in its place came a very clear replication of my tone—but with just a bit of the highs shaved off the top. With the settings at the medium-length mode listed above, I could see the empty, glass hall the pedal sent my sound bouncing down. I heard several pronounced pings of repeats before the signal fully faded out. On slapback settings (time at 8 o’clock, repeats at 11:30), rather than Elvis, I heard something more along the lines of a honky-tonk mic in a glass bottle. Still relatively crystalline, which actually was not my favorite. I like a bit more crinkle—so maybe analog is my bag....“That pillowy warmth evaporated, and in its place came a very clear, pristine replication of my tone—but with just a bit of the highs shaved off the top.”
Next up, digital. Here we have the brightest voice, and as expected, the most faithful repeats. They ping just a few times before shifting to a smooth, single undulating wave. When putting its slapback hat on, I found that the effect was a bit less alluring than I’d observed for the analog and tape voices. This is where the digital delay felt a little too sterile, with the cleanly preserved signal feeling a bit unnatural.
All in all, I dig the EchoBack for its replications of analog and tape voices, and ultimately, lean towards tape. While it’s nice having the digital delay there as an option, it feels a bit too clean when meddling with time of any given length. Nonetheless, this is surely a handy stomp for any acoustic player looking to venture into the land of live effects, or for those who are already there.
