At Breedlove, this resonant local resource—in stunning natural and color-added finishes—is the foundation for a wide range of world-class instruments, including new Custom Shop, Oregon, Exotic, Eco, and Pro models.
Tonewoods, by definition, play a critical role in shaping an acoustic instrument’s sound and character. That’s why myrtlewood—with its stunning aesthetics, sustainable sourcing, versatile tonal qualities, responsiveness, dynamic range, and visual appeal—has emerged in recent years as a top-tier choice for luthiers and musicians. This sometimes-overlooked treasure of the Pacific Northwest both enhances the visual appeal of a guitar and elevates its sonic capabilities.
Although the use of myrtlewood in guitar building was spearheaded by Breedlove Guitars in the ’90s, and it’s a local resource for the Bend, Oregon-based company, today appreciation for the evergreen as raw material for instruments is growing. And Breedlove is offering a series of new myrtlewood-based guitars to keep pace.
Breedlove Guitars: The Myrtlewood Story
Myrtlewood’s appeal lies in its tonal properties. It boasts a spectrum that can be described as a blend of rosewood, mahogany, and maple—offering a balanced palette, clear and pronounced highs, warm midrange, and tight, controlled bass response. This balance ensures that myrtlewood guitars can handle fingerpicking, strumming, or flatpicking with equal grace.
Responsive, Articulate, Dynamic
Myrtlewood’s unique, uniform cellular structure and density contribute to its exceptional responsiveness and articulation. It allows the guitar to produce a quick, precise attack with excellent note separation, making it an excellent choice for intricate fingerstyle playing and percussive techniques. As a result, musicians often praise myrtlewood for its ability to capture the subtle nuances of their playing style. Another advantage is its impressive dynamic range. Myrtlewood responds well to changes in playing intensity, from delicate fingerpicking to powerful strumming. This makes it an ideal choice for musicians who want to explore a wide range of expressive possibilities within their playing.
A Stunning Tonewood – Natural or with Creative Colorwork
Myrtlewood is visually captivating, with a wide range of organic colors and grain patterns. It can range from pale yellow and golden tan to deep purples, reds, and browns. Its figuring—which includes quilted, curly, and spalted patterns—makes each piece of myrtlewood unique. Breedlove guitars has been crafting guitars out of myrtlewood for almost 30 years. During this time, we’ve discovered myrtlewood not only looks fantastic in its natural form (as seen in the new Oregon Series Companion guitar below), but also comes alive with various color applications.
The New USA-Made Companion Acoustic Travel-Sized Guitars
Breedlove’s striking myrtlewood finishes have made plenty of waves in the acoustic guitar industry. The tradition continues with the release of our brand-new stormy night finish on the Oregon Series. This elegant and alluring finish has quickly become a favorite with everyone who has seen it first-hand. It draws its inspiration from a tempestuous night sky in Arizona, rocked by a lightning storm that only a desert can produce.
Breedlove Concert Stormy Night CE Myrtlewood Acoustic Guitar Demo
Along similarly colorful lines, the TB Vintage Edition Blues Orange Concertina M1 is a re-imagining of Breedlove owner Tom Bedell’s personal custom acoustic guitar. Part of the TB Vintage Edition lineup, it draws inspiration from the allure of exotic tonewoods, while being enriched by Tom’s life journey. Crafted using figured myrtlewood, of course, the TB Vintage Edition Blues Orange Concertina M1 is a fun example of what happens when figured myrtlewood is hit with vibrant colorwork! And, of course, the myrtlewood imparts all the tonal warmth, detail, and precise midrange articulation that one would expect.
Breedlove Blues Orange Concertina M1 Acoustic Guitar
Myrtlewood for Every Player
While Breedlove uses myrtlewood on Custom Shop and various USA-made acoustics, it is also incorporated in many of the more affordably priced models in the ECO Collection and Organic Pro Collection.
Breedlove Organic Pro Artista Pro Guitar Series with Designer Angela Christensen
Although myrtlewood already delivers surprising energy and extraordinary tonal balance, we paired it with European spruce on these models, for a more responsive, powerful projection. This professional-grade, all-solid model packs a tremendous amount of value into a more affordable acoustic guitar.
BREEDLOVE ECO COLLECTION: PURSUIT EXOTIC S SERIES
The Pursuit Exotic S Series—featuring TUSQ nuts and saddles and Breedlove’s Earth-conscious, sonically superior EcoTonewood technology—allows you to affordably experience the pure, nuanced sound and striking visual beauty of exotically alluring myrtlewood.
Duane Denison of the Jesus Lizard, EGC Chessie in hands, coaxing some nasty tones from his Hiwatt.
The Jesus Lizard’s sixth album, Blue, served as the band’s final statement from the frontlines of noisy rock for the next 26 years. By the time of their dissolution in 1999, they’d earned a reputation for extreme performances chock full of hard-hitting, machine-like grooves delivered by bassist David Wm. Sims and, at their conclusion, drummer Mac McNeilly, at times aided and at other times punctured by the frontline of guitarist Duane Denison’s incisive, dissonant riffing, and presided over by the cantankerous howl of vocalist David Yow. In the years since, performative, thrilling bands such as Pissed Jeans, METZ, and Idles have built upon the Lizard’s musical foundation.
Denison has kept himself plenty busy over the last couple decades, forming the avant-rock supergroup Tomahawk—with vocalist Mike Patton, bassist Trevor Dunn (both from Mr. Bungle), and drummer John Stanier of Helmet—and alongside various other projects including Th’ Legendary Shack Shakers and Hank Williams III. The Jesus Lizard eventually reunited, but until now have only celebrated their catalog, never releasing new jams.
The Jesus Lizard, from left: bassist David Wm. Sims, singer David Yow, drummer Mac McNeilly, and guitarist Duane Denison.
Photo by Joshua Black Wilkins
Back in 2018, Denison, hanging in a hotel room with Yow, played a riff on his unplugged electric guitar that caught the singer’s ear. That song, called “West Side,” will remain unreleased for now, but Denison explains: “He said, ‘Wow, that’s really good. What is that?’ And I said, ‘It’s just some new thing. Why don’t we do an album?’” From those unassuming beginnings, the Jesus Lizard’s creative juices started flowing.
So, how does a band—especially one who so indelibly captured the ineffable energy of live rock performance—prepare to get a new record together 26 years after their last? Back in their earlier days, the members all lived together in a band house, collectively tending to the creative fire when inspiration struck. All these years later, they reside in different cities, so their process requires sending files back and forth and only meeting up for occasional demo sessions over the course of “three or four years.”
“When the time comes to get more in performance mode, I have a practice space. I go there by myself and crank it up. I turn that amp up and turn the metronome up and play loud.” —Duane Denison
the Jesus Lizard "Alexis Feels Sick"
Distance creates an obstacle to striking while the proverbial iron is hot, but Denison has a method to keep things energized: “Practice loud.” The guitarist professes the importance of practice, in general, and especially with a metronome. “We keep very detailed records of what the beats per minute of these songs are,” he explains. “To me, the way to do it is to run it to a Bluetooth speaker and crank it, and then crank your amp. I play a little at home, but when the time comes to get more in performance mode, I have a practice space. I go there by myself and crank it up. I turn that amp up and turn the metronome up and play loud.”
It’s a proven solution. On Rack—recorded at Patrick Carney’s Audio Eagle studio with producer Paul Allen—the band sound as vigorous as ever, proving they’ve not only remained in step with their younger selves, but they may have surpassed it with faders cranked. “Duane’s approach, both as a guitarist and writer, has an angular and menacing fingerprint that is his own unique style,” explains Allen. “The conviction in his playing that he is known for from his recordings in the ’80s and ’90s is still 100-percent intact and still driving full throttle today.”
“I try to be really, really precise,” he says. “I think we all do when it comes to the basic tracks, especially the rhythm parts. The band has always been this machine-like thing.” Together, they build a tension with Yow’s careening voice. “The vocals tend to be all over the place—in and out of tune, in and out of time,” he points out. “You’ve got this very free thing moving around in the foreground, and then you’ve got this very precise, detailed band playing behind it. That’s why it works.”
Before Rack, the Jesus Lizard hadn’t released a new record since 1998’s Blue.
Denison’s guitar also serves as the foreground foil to Yow’s unhinged raving, as on “Alexis Feels Sick,” where they form a demented harmony, or on the midnight creep of “What If,” where his vibrato-laden melodies bolster the singer’s unsettled, maniacal display. As precise as his riffs might be, his playing doesn’t stay strictly on the grid. On the slow, skulking “Armistice Day,” his percussive chording goes off the rails, giving way to a solo that slices that groove like a chef’s knife through warm butter as he reorganizes rock ’n’ roll histrionics into his own cut-up vocabulary.
“During recording sessions, his first solo takes are usually what we decide to keep,” explains Allen. “Listen to Duane’s guitar solos on Jack White’s ‘Morning, Noon, and Night,’ Tomahawk’s ‘Fatback,’ and ‘Grind’ off Rack. There’s a common ‘contained chaos’ thread among them that sounds like a harmonic Rubik’s cube that could only be solved by Duane.”
“Duane’s approach, both as a guitarist and writer, has an angular and menacing fingerprint that is his own unique style.” —Rack producer Paul Allen
To encapsulate just the right amount of intensity, “I don’t over practice everything,” the guitarist says. Instead, once he’s created a part, “I set it aside and don’t wear it out.” On Rack, it’s obvious not a single kilowatt of musical energy was lost in the rehearsal process.
Denison issues his noisy masterclass with assertive, overdriven tones supporting his dissonant voicings like barbed wire on top of an electric fence. The occasional application of slapback delay adds a threatening aura to his exacting riffage. His tones were just as carefully crafted as the parts he plays, and he relied mostly on his signature Electrical Guitar Company Chessie for the sessions, though a Fender Uptown Strat also appears, as well as a Taylor T5Z, which he chose for its “cleaner, hyper-articulated sound” on “Swan the Dog.” Though he’s been spotted at recent Jesus Lizard shows with a brand-new Powers Electric—he points out he played a demo model and says, “I just couldn’t let go of it,” so he ordered his own—that wasn’t until tracking was complete.
Duane Denison's Gear
Denison wields his Powers Electric at the Blue Room in Nashville last June.
Photo by Doug Coombe
Guitars
- Electrical Guitar Company Chessie
- Fender Uptown Strat
- Taylor T5Z
- Gibson ES-135
- Powers Electric
Amps
- Hiwatt Little J
- Hiwatt 2x12 cab with Fane F75 speakers
- Fender Super-Sonic combo
- Early ’60s Fender Bassman
- Marshall 1987X Plexi Reissue
- Victory Super Sheriff head
- Blackstar HT Stage 60—2 combos in stereo with Celestion Neo Creamback speakers and Mullard tubes
Effects
- Line 6 Helix
- Mantic Flex Pro
- TC Electronic G-Force
- Menatone Red Snapper
Strings and Picks
- Stringjoy Orbiters .0105 and .011 sets
- Dunlop celluloid white medium
- Sun Studios yellow picks
He ran through various amps—Marshalls, a Fender Bassman, two Fender Super-Sonic combos, and a Hiwatt Little J—at Audio Eagle. Live, if he’s not on backline gear, you’ll catch him mostly using 60-watt Blackstar HT Stage 60s loaded with Celestion Neo Creambacks. And while some boxes were stomped, he got most of his effects from a Line 6 Helix. “All of those sounds [in the Helix] are modeled on analog sounds, and you can tweak them endlessly,” he explains. “It’s just so practical and easy.”
The tools have only changed slightly since the band’s earlier days, when he favored Travis Beans and Hiwatts. Though he’s started to prefer higher gain sounds, Allen points out that “his guitar sound has always had teeth with a slightly bright sheen, and still does.”
“Honestly, I don’t think my tone has changed much over the past 30-something years,” Denison says. “I tend to favor a brighter, sharper sound with articulation. Someone sent me a video I had never seen of myself playing in the ’80s. I had a band called Cargo Cult in Austin, Texas. What struck me about it is it didn’t sound terribly different than what I sound like right now as far as the guitar sound and the approach. I don’t know what that tells you—I’m consistent?”
YouTube It
The Jesus Lizard take off at Nashville’s Blue Room this past June with “Hide & Seek” from Rack.
