John Bohlinger demos the Canadian-made Godin Stadium Pro, a highly versatile guitar with TV Jones Starwood and Lollar T Special pickups, providing fat tones from country to hard rock, all on a sleek Laurentian basswood body with a Rock Maple neck and high-gloss finish.
Godin Stadium Pro Electric Guitar - Pacifik Blue with Maple Fretboard
A quick glance at the Stadium Pro presents the structure and style of a true American classic. An under-the-hood investigation, however, reveals outstanding modern playability. The guitar's basswood body transmits a balanced, high-chime tone belying its light weight, making performances and recording sessions a breeze with no compromise to your sound. Likewise, the semi-gloss neck and silky smooth fingerboard motivate supreme access to all 22 frets at lightning speeds to ensure you're capable of mastering any playing situation. Topped off with high-ratio tuning machines, a Graph Tech nut, and a custom T-Ashtray tailpiece, the Stadium Pro summons righteous vintage tones with maximum intonation stability.
Godin''s Montreal Premiere is a cool deviation from established semi-hollow design templates that''s beautifully built and delivers a more playable, comfortable, and unique sounding guitar.
Guitarists in a tone rut tend to look to different pedals or amps, or perhaps switch from single-coils to humbuckers. Those who look to semi-hollows as a means of transformation are fewer in number. On the surface, it’s not hard to understand why. Less experienced players who tinker with hollows and semi-hollows often return with harrowing tales of wailing feedback and opaque, dark, and wooly tones. For others, the very sight of an f-hole suggests uptight, uptown, precious, and a not-very-rock-’n’-roll approach—no matter how many Marshall stacks Alvin Lee ripped to shreds with his ES-335.
But as any half-resourceful player who has taken the time to explore that world can attest, they are guitars of incredible potential—brimming with overtones and resonance, and capable of moving from mellow to explosive with the twist of a volume or tone pot. Godin’s new Canadian-built Montreal Premiere delivers on the promise of this potential—sometimes spectacularly. It’s also a cool deviation from established semi-hollow design templates that, beyond good looks, delivers a more playable, comfortable, and even unique sounding guitar.
Cool and Compact
Godin’s ability to deliver killer quality at an
exceptional price never fails to impress. At
around 1,500 bucks, the Montreal Premiere
is a little more than some guitars in this
category, but you’re also getting a lot of
attention to detail from workers right here
in North America.
The Premiere’s handsome sunburst finish is almost entirely without imperfections, save for a little finish build up at the binding around the neck joint. The subtle grain of the arched cherry top looks good with the sunburst, though some suitors might wish for a more spectacularly grained top at this price point. The arched cherry back is finished in a flawless and shiny mahogany-like finish that matches the mahogany neck. But here again, both the grain and finish are subdued to a point that some players may wish for a little more flash. Customers looking to the Montreal as a sonic tool probably won’t give a hoot, but those who like a combination of flash and playability might expect a touch more.
Ergonomically, the Montreal Premiere is a joy to hang out with. The dimensions are pretty similar to Gibson’s compact semi-hollow ES-339. But the Montreal’s single cutaway, light weight, and comfortable dimensions are at times reminiscent of a Guild Bluesbird or slimmed-down Ibanez George Benson. Elsewhere, the construction is well executed and thoughtfully designed—most overtly on the inside of the body, where you can behold Godin’s breathe-through core. Unlike more traditional semi-hollowbodies that rely on a solid center block to improve sustain and quell the feedback potential of hot humbuckers, the Godin uses a relatively more engineered approach. The result is a spruce block just a little wider than the pickup rings that’s arched at the three points along its length. The visual effect is akin to having a old stone bridge or Roman aqueduct inside your guitar, and the practical result is a smart compromise between weight savings, sustain, and structural integrity. According to Godin, this core considerably enhances the guitar’s resonant qualities.
The hardware is familiar, fairly straightforward and tasteful stuff—two Godin Custom humbuckers, a 3-way switch, volume and tone knobs, and Kluson-style tuners that are visually well suited for the slender headstock. The bridge is a Graph Tech ResoMax, but you can also get the Montreal Premiere with a Bigsby and roller bridge.
Jack-of-All-Tones
If you’ve ever been scared off by a semi-hollow
for any of the reasons discussed
above, you’ll be surprised at how forgiving
the Montreal Premiere can be. If your first-call
amp is a 100-watt 4x12, this might
not be the best match, but it will do amazing
things at high volume—particularly if
you’re a player who savors the sounds you
can find at the boundaries of chaos.
Through a wide-open Fender Twin Reverb, the Montreal was less prone to feedback and more inclined to highlighting the amp’s natural compression at high volume—an effect you rarely experience with a Stratocaster on the other end. At these higher volume levels, the bridge pickup exhibits a unique mix of boxy, compressed, and ringing, harmonically charged tones. You don’t have to work too hard to send the amp into fairly musical feedback zones. But the more compact body is fairly easy to control and with a little practice you can get into some cool spaces where the singing qualities of the humbucker mingle with the resonance and edge-of-feedback overtones generated by the body. If there’s one thing you won’t really get, it’s the stinging tones and response you get from a solidbody—but then again that’s true of most semi-hollows. And even with the Montreal’s tone control wide open and a fat dose of amp treble and mid, there is a slight but discernible softness and compression to the attack.
Ratings
Pros:
Unique tone palate. Great for airy rhythm textures and
lead tones from chunky blues to clucking Nashville leads.
Cons:
No dedicated tone and volume controls for each pickup.
Tones:
Playability/Ease of Use:
Build/Design:
Value:
Street:
$1,495
Company
godinguitars.com
While the Montreal Premiere will both behave and yield cool tone surprises at high volume with a big amp, it’s definitely most at home with small- to medium-power amps. The bridge pickup will dish nasty garage rock chords and singing-to-snappy lead tones. The guitar’s airiness—an acknowledged design objective of the breathe-through core, is most apparent in the middle position, where the two pickups work in unison to generate a paradoxically spacious-but-tight tone that’s perfect for fast, syncopated Tony S. McPhee clean rhythm work or compressed Nashville leads. The neck pickup, as you might expect, is well suited for mellow Wes Montgomery moves, but it does lack some of the harmonic complexity of a bigger bodied guitar, which gives you less room and range for manipulating the tone control. I tended to keep the tone wide open to generate the most dynamic range, and in the lower three-quarters of the tone control’s range the capacity for pick dynamics fell off considerably.
The Verdict
If you’re a dedicated solidbody player,
you might make a case that the Montreal
Premiere tries to be a jack-of-all-trades at
the expense of doing any one thing extraordinarily.
But the more time I spent with the
Montreal, the more I was impressed with
its versatility. The lack of dedicated tone
and volume controls, which would have
expanded the tone and expressive potential
significantly, was an ongoing frustration—particularly in louder rock settings where
you could use a four control set up to
generate feedback effects and explore more
dramatic color shifts on the fly.
But while there are times the Montreal Premiere feels a bit unorthodox, it also inhabits a pretty unique stretch of tone turf that ranges from airy and spacious to bossy and rowdy. The balance and playability are excellent, the guitar is beautifully built, and you’d be hard-pressed to find a classier looking date onstage. The near-$1,500 price tag does give pause, but for such a carefully crafted guitar, the price tag isn’t unfair either. And if you’re intrigued by the potential of a semi-hollow but less keen on going down the same-old imported semi-hollow route, you’d be a fool not to explore where the Montreal Premiere fits into your own tone agenda.
TOP: With its quality tonewoods, high-end appointments, and detailed inlay work, a pre-owned Larrivée OM- 10 is a relative bargain considering its current value of $1,600 to $2,000. BOTTOM:
TOP: With its quality tonewoods,
high-end appointments, and detailed
inlay work, a pre-owned Larrivée OM-
10 is a relative bargain considering
its current value of $1,600 to $2,000.
BOTTOM: The OM-10 sports rosewood
back and sides and a single-piece
mahogany neck.
Hey Zach,
I’m a big fan of Jean Larrivée and
his guitars. I used to own a Larrivée
OM-10 and sold it for $1,450 in
2002. Could you provide some history
on Larrivée and tell me what this guitar
is worth today? I feel like Larrivée
is an underappreciated luthier and I
don’t hear much about him. I’m curious
if I sold this guitar too cheaply!
Thanks,
Stan in Portland, OR
Hi Stan,
Jean Larrivée has been building for more
than 40 years and many of his instruments
feature beautiful inlay work. Like
you, many guitarists aren’t familiar with
Larrivée’s history, so before we get into the
OM-10 you sold, let’s take a moment to
recap the Canadian luthier’s journey.
Larrivée began studying classical guitar at the age of 20, and four years into his study, he met German classical-guitar luthier Edgar Mönch. Larrivée began an apprenticeship with the luthier in Toronto, and built two guitars under Mönch’s guidance before starting to build guitars on his own in his home workshop.
Larrivée Guitars officially launched in 1968 and Larrivée moved into his first true workshop in 1970, which was located above a theater. At first, he focused exclusively on classical guitars, but then in 1971 he built his first steel-string. After a period of extensive experimentation, he began introducing his own body styles and shapes, as well as original bracing systems and other unique features. In 1972, Larrivée married his wife Wendy, who designs and engraves the inlays on many of the company’s guitars.
Larrivée Guitars grew throughout the 1970s, and by 1976, the company had eight employees and was building between 25 and 30 guitars a month. In 1977, Larrivée moved operations to the island city of Victoria, British Columbia, providing access to the wet, coastal forests of Western Canada. Five years later, Larrivée moved the company to the mainland of British Columbia, right around the time most acoustic guitar manufacturers were going through their toughest times. But instead of consolidating operations, Larrivée began building solidbody electric guitars in 1983. Production of his electric guitars lasted through 1989, when the market had improved enough for him to focus solely on acoustics again.
The 1990s marked a resurgence in guitar manufacturing and the company moved to an 11,000 square foot factory in 1991, where they employed 35 people and built 25 guitars a day. In 1997, Larrivée Guitars introduced the lowest-priced model in their lineup with the D-03, which would firmly establish Larrivée in the acoustic guitar arena. In 1998, they moved into another new factory with 33,000 square feet, employing 100 people and producing 60 to 72 guitars per day. Three years later, Larrivée opened a U.S. factory in Southern California, just ten days before September 11, 2001.
During the next two years, Larrivée overhauled and streamlined their production process, ultimately building the 03 Series guitars in Canada and all remaining models in the U.S. In 2005 Larrivée introduced the Traditional Series guitars, and in 2008 the company again ventured into the electric realm with the RS-4 model.
Today, Larrivée is very much a family operation. Jean, his wife Wendy, son Matthew, and daughter Christine all work in the California plant where they build the company’s gloss-finish guitars. Larrivée’s other son, John Jr., operates the plant in Canada, which produces their satin-finished models. The company continues to offer several body shapes—including traditional designs and a few of Larrivée’s own—and several decoration levels for their models, from simple to highly ornate.
The Larrivée OM-10, as its name implies, has an OM-style body. Specifications include a Canadian Sitka spruce top, rosewood back and sides, abalone rosette, abalone purfling, and a mahogany neck. The OM-10 boasts other high-end features such as the ivoroid-bound ebony fretboard with deluxe abalone inlays, sterling silver headstock border with mother-ofpearl inlay, and an ebony bridge. Currently, this guitar is worth between $1,600 and $2,000 in excellent condition.
Considering what you sold it for and what it is worth today, I don’t think either party should feel cheated. Regardless of the owner, I’d treat this guitar as a treasure. Typically, you can’t buy guitars with such exquisite inlays for under $5,000, which makes this very fine flattop a relative bargain.