Click here to see the full-size video. |
 |
German luthier Jens Ritter is a trained engineer who got into building guitars and has since attained a fair amount of fame as a custom bass builder. If you have a look at the instruments on his website, you can’t help but be struck by the fact that they have an artistic look and give the impression of being well engineered. Maybe that’s why I was a little unsure what to make of this guitar when it showed up, but I jumped in to see where it took me.
Crowning a Princess
The Princess Isabella got its start when Ritter,
during a trip to New York City, visited Rudy
Pensa at Rudy’s Music shop. Pensa wondered
aloud what sort of jazz guitar Ritter might
come up with, and the wheels started to turn
in Ritter’s mind. When he completed the
design work, he even decided to name the
guitar after a young girl he met on the trip.But while the Princess Isabella was built to emulate the sound and feel of an archtop jazz guitar, it certainly doesn’t look that way. We’ll get to the sound shortly, but let’s start with what it is. The most obvious thing about the PI is that it is white from stem to stern. Every bit of wood is finished in a lovely white shade, and while one of my core beliefs is that the only guitar that looks good in white is a Strat, the finish work here is flawless. The trim is all in 24k gold plating, and there is even a faux f-hole rendered in gold. The body is made of very thin and light swamp ash, while the neck is mahogany with a maple fretboard. The striking tailpiece is made of hand-cast spring steel that was gold plated by a jeweler in Ritter’s hometown of Deidesheim. The tuners are gold Gotoh 510s—the best money can buy. The bridge is a Schaller GTM custom, which is much like a Gibson Nashville Tune-o-matic. It sits on a 24k-gold-plated brass foot that floats on the guitar’s top over a hollow internal chamber that is meant to enhance attack.
The pickup, which fits the guitar’s vibe perfectly, is made to Ritter’s specs by Häeussel Pickups. It uses rare-earth magnets that are quite powerful, facilitating a very thin, good-looking design. The guitar also has a very large 24k-gold-plated backplate that covers the pickup wire channel as well as the hollow space under the bridge.
A Solidbody Jazz Guitar?
This brings us to the fact
that this is, in fact, a solidbody
guitar. And when I tell you it’s
thin, I mean thin—about an inch
thick. So if you are used to a hollow
body and resting your arm, forget
it. It’s really too thin for comfortable
arm resting. But, the
body shape is wonderfully
comfortable and feels
great when you’re
standing. It also
rests very nicely in
your lap. Further,
the body is amazingly
resonant
and vibrates like
a living thing in
your hands. Ritter
takes particular pride
in jazz-great George
Benson’s amazed reaction
to this being a solidbody, and
rightly so. And the playability of the Princess Isabella is everything you could
want from a $10,000 guitar. It plays effortlessly.Playability and Tones
The PI has a scale length of 28", which makes it a baritone. However, it arrived strung for standard tuning. After spending a lot of time with the guitar I can tell you that it plays so well that I didn’t notice the longer scale length at first. If you have big hands, this will not be a problem—and it may be what you’ve wanted all your life. If you have small hands, you’ll have to try it and see how it works for you.
Tone-wise, the PI has a really lovely sound. Overall, it has a very organic, acoustic quality. Ritter chose to build it with no onboard controls so the sound would be as pure as possible. So, between the fine-quality wood, great pickup, and excellent playability, what you have seems to be quite true to what Ritter was going for. The PI sounds simply wonderful for solo guitar. It has perhaps more sustain than an archtop, but it retains a seemingly delayed attack very much like a traditional jazz guitar. This attack is the result of two key things (among others): the spring-steel tailpiece and the hollow area under the bridge. I asked Ritter why he didn’t go for a wooden bridge if he wanted arch-top-type response. He told me he tried quite a few different bridges of various materials and got the best response from the metal bridge that is now part of the design. And it makes sense when you consider that banjo mutes work by sticking a lump of brass to the bridge. I should also note how much I like the sound of brass saddles on a Telecaster. So, however it works, it does work.
As a long-scale standard guitar, the PI is quite successful. However, I was curious how the guitar would respond with the bigger strings and B-to-B tuning. The answer is that the very resonant swamp ash body really rattles your teeth—in the good way. It’s good to be reminded that one of the things about luthier- built guitars is the care they take in wood selection, and it really shows in the PI.
The Final Mojo
I’m not sure how many jazz guitarists are searching for a baritone, let alone a bright white-and-gold solidbody. Nevertheless, the Princess Isabella is the result of a great deal of research by a very thoughtful man, and it shows in spades. You already know from looking at the pictures if you like it’s look or not. But nobody will find flaw with the quality craftsmanship and design work. Further, though our review guitar was numbered 3 out of 50, Ritter still considers it a prototype, and he has already made refinements in the design of subsequent PIs—including getting rid of the ample neck volute. (He did so by impregnating the area between the peghead and neck with a resin that makes it stronger.) The guy is always thinking about his next move.
Needless to say, the PI is quite an unusual guitar with its long scale, unique look, lack of onboard controls, and steep price. But, get over it. It’s a big world and it is made richer by artists that think differently. As for the price, I know guitar players are, let’s face it, cheap. But all I can tell you is that there are tons of cheap guitars available, and you often get what you pay for. When you want the upper-echelon quality of a handmade custom instrument, you have to save your pennies and get ready to pay. Sometimes it also helps to remind yourself that, price-wise, guitars are still at the low end of stringed instruments.
As for Ritter, keep in mind that he’s a custom builder, and as such he’s open to what you, the customer, want. So if you want a short-scale Isabella made with exotic, beautiful woods and 10 knobs, he’ll build it for you. And I am betting it will be extraordinary.
Buy if...
you’d like a fine, world-class instrument that looks like nothing else.
Skip if...
you are old-school and broke.
Rating...
MSRP $10,000 - Jens Ritter Instruments - ritter-instruments.com |
LR Baggs Session DI Acoustic Guitar Preamp / DI
Inspired by the LR Baggs Handcrafted Video Sessions and our experience in some of Nashville’s great studios, the Session Acoustic DI brings our signature studio sound to your live rig. The Session DI enhances your acoustic pickup and imparts the rich sonic character that you’d expect from an experienced audio engineer using some of the world’s finest studio gear. We’ve captured this studio magic and put it into a compact, easy-to-use DI that will transform your live sound.
For the first time in the band’s history, the Dawes lineup for Oh Brother consisted of just Griffin and Taylor Goldsmith (left and right).
Goldsmith’s lyrics spoke to me the loudest, with lines like “Well, you can judge the whole world on the sparkle that you think it lacks / Yes, you can stare into the abyss, but it’s starin’ right back” (a casual Nietzsche paraphrase); and “Oh, the snowfall this time of year / It’s not what Birmingham is used to / I get the feeling that I brought it here / And now I’m taking it away.” The way his words painted a portrait of the sincere, sentimental man behind them, along with his cozy, unassuming guitar work and the band’s four-part harmonies, had me hooked.
Nothing Is Wrong and Stories Don’t End came next, and I happily gobbled up more folksy fodder in tracks like “If I Wanted,” “Most People,” and “From a Window Seat.” But 2015’s All Your Favorite Bands, which debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard Folk Albumschart, didn’t land with me, and by the time 2016’s We’re All Gonna Die was released, it was clear that Goldsmith had shifted thematically in his writing. A friend drew a thoughtful Warren Zevon comparison to the single, “When the Tequila Runs Out”—a commentary on vapid, conceited, American-socialite party culture—but it still didn’t really do it for me. I fell off the Dawes train a bit, and became somewhat oblivious to their three full-lengths that followed.
Oh Brotheris Goldsmith’s latest addition to the Dawes songbook, and I’m grateful to say that it’s brought me back. After having done some catching up, I’d posit that it’s the second work in the third act, or fall season, of his songwriting—where 2022’s Misadventures of Doomscrollercracked open the door, Oh Brother swings it wide. And it doesn’t have much more than Dawes’ meat and potatoes, per se, in common with acts one or two. Some moodiness has stayed—as well as societal disgruntlement and the arrangement elements that first had me intoxicated. But then there’s the 7/4 section in the middle of “Front Row Seat”; the gently unwinding, quiet, intimate jazz-club feel of “Surprise!”; the experimentally percussive, soft-spoken “Enough Already”; and the unexpected, dare I say, Danny Elfman-esque harmonic twists and turns in the closing track, “Hilarity Ensues.”
The main engine behind Dawes, the Goldsmith brothers are both native “Angelinos,” having been born and raised in the L.A. area. Taylor is still proud to call the city his home.
Photo by Jon Chu
“I have this working hypothesis that who you are as a songwriter through the years is pretty close to who you are in a dinner conversation,” Goldsmith tells me in an interview, as I ask him about that thematic shift. “When I was 23, if I was invited to dinner with grownups [laughs], or just friends or whatever, and they say, ‘How you doin’, Taylor?’ I probably wouldn’t think twice to be like, ‘I’m not that good. There’s this girl, and … I don’t know where things are at—can I share this with you? Is that okay?’ I would just go in in a way that’s fairly indiscreet! And I’m grateful to that version of me, especially as a writer, because that’s what I wanted to hear, so that’s what I was making at the time.
“But then as I got older, it became, ‘Oh, maybe that’s not an appropriate way to answer the question of how I’m doing.’ Or, ‘Maybe I’ve spent enough years thinking about me! What does it feel like to turn the lens around?’” he continues, naming Elvis Costello and Paul Simon as inspirations along the way through that self-evolution. “Also, trying to be mindful of—I had strengths then that I don’t have now, but I have strengths now that I didn’t have then. And now it’s time to celebrate those. Even in just a physical way, like hearing Frank Zappa talking about how his agility as a guitar player was waning as he got older. It’s like, that just means that you showcase different aspects of your skills.
“I am a changing person. It would be weird if I was still writing the same way I was when I was 23. There would probably be some weird implications there as to who I’d be becoming as a human [laughs].”
Taylor Goldsmith considers Oh Brother, the ninth full-length in Dawes’ catalog, to be the beginning of a new phase of Dawes, containing some of his most unfiltered, unedited songwriting.
Since its inception, the engine behind Dawes has been the brothers Goldsmith, with Taylor on guitar and vocals and Griffin on drums and sometimes vocal harmonies. But they’ve always had consistent backup. For the first several years, that was Wylie Gelber on bass and Tay Strathairn on keyboards. On We’re All Gonna Die, Lee Pardini replaced Strathairn and has been with the band since. Oh Brother, however, marks the departure of Gelber and Pardini.
“We were like, ‘Wow, this is an intense time; this is a vulnerable time,’” remarks Goldsmith, who says that their parting was supportive and loving, but still rocked him and Griffin. “You get a glimpse of your vulnerability in a way that you haven’t felt in a long time when things are just up and running. For a second there, we’re like, ‘We’re getting a little rattled—how do we survive this?’”
They decided to pair up with producer Mike Viola, a close family friend, who has also worked with Mandy Moore—Taylor’s spouse—along with Panic! At the Disco, Andrew Bird, and Jenny Lewis. “[We knew that] he understands all of the parameters of that raw state. And, you know, I always show Mike my songs, so he was aware of what we had cookin’,” says Goldsmith.
Griffin stayed behind the kit, but Taylor took over on bass and keys, the latter of which he has more experience with than he’s displayed on past releases. “We’ve made records where it’s very tempting to appeal to your strengths, where it’s like, ‘Oh, I know how to do this, I’m just gonna nail it,’” he says. “Then there’s records that we make where we really push ourselves into territories where we aren’t comfortable. That contributed to [Misadventures of Doomscroller] feeling like a living, breathing thing—very reactive, very urgent, very aware. We were paying very close attention. And I would say the same goes for this.”
That new terrain, says Goldsmith, “forced us to react to each other and react to the music in new ways, and all of a sudden, we’re exploring new corners of what we do. I’m really excited in that sense, because it’s like this is the first album of a new phase.”
“That forced us to react to each other and react to the music in new ways, and all of a sudden, we’re exploring new corners of what we do.”
In proper folk (or even folk-rock) tradition, the music of Dawes isn’t exactly riddled with guitar solos, but that’s not to say that Goldsmith doesn’t show off his chops when the timing is right. Just listen to the languid, fluent lick on “Surprise!”, the shamelessly prog-inspired riff in the bridge of “Front Row Seat,” and the tactful, articulate line that threads through “Enough Already.” Goldsmith has a strong, individual sense of phrasing, where his improvised melodies can be just as biting as his catalog’s occasional lyrical jabs at presumably toxic ex-girlfriends, and just as melancholy as his self-reflective metaphors, all the while without drawing too much attention to himself over the song.
Of course, most of our conversation revolves around songwriting, as that’s the craft that’s the truest and closest to his identity. “There’s an openness, a goofiness—I even struggle to say it now, but—an earnestness that goes along with who I am, not only as a writer but as a person,” Goldsmith elaborates. “And I think it’s important that those two things reflect one another. ’Cause when you meet someone and they don’t, I get a little bit weirded out, like, ‘What have I been listening to? Are you lying to me?’” he says with a smile.
Taylor Goldsmith's Gear
Pictured here performing live in 2014, Taylor Goldsmith has been the primary songwriter for all of Dawes' records, beginning with 2009’s North Hills.
Photo by Tim Bugbee/Tinnitus Photography
Guitars
- Fender Telecaster
- Gibson ES-345
- Radocaster (made by Wylie Gelber)
Amps
- ’64 Fender Deluxe
- Matchless Laurel Canyon
Effects
- 29 Pedals EUNA
- Jackson Audio Bloom
- Ibanez Tube Screamer with Keeley mod
- Vintage Boss Chorus
- Vintage Boss VB-2 Vibrato
- Strymon Flint
- Strymon El Capistan
Strings
- Ernie Ball .010s
In Goldsmith’s songwriting process, he explains that he’s learned to lean away from the inclination towards perfectionism. Paraphrasing something he heard Father John Misty share about Leonard Cohen, he says, “People think you’re cultivating these songs, or, ‘I wouldn’t deign to write something that’s beneath me,’ but the reality is, ‘I’m a rat, and I’ll take whatever I can possibly get, and then I’ll just try to get the best of it.’
“Ever since Misadventures of Doomscroller,” he adds, “I’ve enjoyed this quality of, rather than try to be a minimalist, I want to be a maximalist. I want to see how much a song can handle.” For the songs on Oh Brother, that meant that he decided to continue adding “more observations within the universe” of “Surprise!”, ultimately writing six verses. A similar approach to “King of the Never-Wills,” a ballad about a character suffering from alcoholism, resulted in four verses.
“The economy of songwriting that we’re all taught would buck that,” says Goldsmith. “It would insist that I only keep the very best and shed something that isn’t as good. But I’m not going to think economically. I’m not going to think, ‘Is this self-indulgent?’
Goldsmith’s songwriting has shifted thematically over the years, from more personal, introspective expression to more social commentary and, at times, even satire, in songs like We’re All Gonna Die’s “When the Tequila Runs Out.”
Photo by Mike White
“I don’t abide that term being applied to music. Because if there’s a concern about self-indulgence, then you’d have to dismiss all of jazz. All of it. You’d have to dismiss so many of my most favorite songs. Because in a weird way, I feel like that’s the whole point—self-indulgence. And then obviously relating to someone else, to another human being.” (He elaborates that, if Bob Dylan had trimmed back any of the verses on “Desolation Row,” it would have deprived him of the unique experience it creates for him when he listens to it.)
One of the joys of speaking with Goldsmith is just listening to his thought processes. When I ask him a question, he seems compelled to share every backstory to every detail that’s going through his head, in an effort to both do his insights justice and to generously provide me with the most complete answer. That makes him a bit verbose, but not in a bad way, because he never rambles. There is an endpoint to his thoughts. When he’s done, however, it takes me a second to realize that it’s then my turn to speak.
To his point on artistic self-indulgence, I offer that there’s no need for artists to feel “icky” about self-promotion—that to promote your art is to celebrate it, and to create a shared experience with your audience.
“I hear what you’re saying loud and clear; I couldn’t agree more,” Goldsmith replies. “But I also try to be mindful of this when I’m writing, like if I’m going to drag you through the mud of, ‘She left today, she’s not coming back, I’m a piece of shit, what’s wrong with me, the end’.... That might be relatable, that might evoke a response, but I don’t know if that’s necessarily helpful … other than dragging someone else through the shit with me.
“In a weird way, I feel like that’s the whole point—self-indulgence. And then obviously relating to someone else, to another human being.”
“So, if I’m going to share, I want there to be something to offer, something that feels like: ‘Here’s a path that’s helped me through this, or here’s an observation that has changed how I see this particular experience.’ It’s so hard to delineate between the two, but I feel like there is a difference.”
Naming the opening track “Mister Los Angeles,” “King of the Never-Wills,” and even the title track to his 2015 chart-topper, “All Your Favorite Bands,” he remarks, “I wouldn’t call these songs ‘cool.’ Like, when I hear what cool music is, I wouldn’t put those songs next to them [laughs]. But maybe this record was my strongest dose of just letting me be me, and recognizing what that essence is rather than trying to force out certain aspects of who I am, and force in certain aspects of what I’m not. I think a big part of writing these songs was just self-acceptance,” he concludes, laughing, “and just a whole lot of fishing.”
YouTube It
Led by Goldsmith, Dawes infuses more rock power into their folk sound live at the Los Angeles Ace Hotel in 2023.
