acoustic guitar players

Unconventional construction methods help set a very unusual acoustic/electric hybrid apart.

Beautiful playability. Stable under neck-wobbling, pitch-bending maneuvers.

Polarizing styling and construction if you’re strictly traditional. Expensive for a niche instrument.

$1,999

Riversong Glenwood TS6
riversongguitars.com

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The first and perhaps most important thing to know about Riversong’s Glennwood TS6 is that it aspires to hybridize elements of electric and acoustic guitars. This is not a new idea—certainly not in the amplified acoustic era, where the straightest route to eliminating feedback is by reducing the resonant elements that cause feedback in the first place. Some acoustic/electrics achieve these ends by slimming bodies down to electric-guitar thickness. Riversong, however, sticks to traditional acoustic formula by making the TS6 a full-sized instrument. Its dimensions are a little bit atypical: the 16" wide body and 4 3/4" thickness are about the same size as Martin’s “jumbo” J body and the Taylor Grand Pacific. The pretty silhouette also echoes the curvaceousness of those larger guitars. Those similarities sometimes feel like an exception, though. At nearly every other turn, the TS6 very happily breaks the acoustic design mold.

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