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I offer a cutaway on the OM models and the SJ models only.

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I would say that 97% of the guitars that I have built have 1 3/4″ width nuts. This is the sweet spot for most fingerstyle guitar players and a great many players that are accustomed to prewar guitars. Some flat pickers and rock players will pick the narrower 1 11/16″ nut and some fingerstylists will go to the wider 1 13/16″.

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The Loar Style sunburst is an old-style dye in the wood sunburst, reminiscent of those on early Gibson mandolins and guitars up until about the mid-1920s.  At that time most guitar manufacturers changed over to spraying sunbursts with pigmented lacquer, a far easier and more consistent way to do it.  Where the sunburst done with a dye stain brings out every flaw in the wood, the sprayed sunburst masks all the defects. However, when done correctly, on a nice piece of wood, it is in my view the most beautiful sunburst finish. It is particularly beautiful when used on maple for the back and sides.

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The standard wood that I use for back and sides is AAA Brazilian rosewood. This I consider to be the king of tonewoods. I do have an inventory of some fancier mahogany and some beautiful curly maple & koa, which also makes wonderful guitars. I don’t often venture outside of these classic tone woods, though if you would like something other than these choices I’m open for discussion. I do have some “Master” & “Master Reserve” Brazilian rosewood which would be at an additional cost.

The top wood that is standard is Sitka spruce. This is a fine tone wood that makes excellent sounding guitars. I have a stock aged Adirondack red spruce and aged European spruce as an upgrade to the standard spruce.

This embellishment harkens back to a building technique used before 1900. A common practice was to join the headstock to the shank of the neck with a V-joint. When the Martin guitar company switched to South American mahogany from Spanish Cedar in the early part of the century the V joint faded away, as the large mahogany boards made it easy to make one piece necks. However, the embellishment remained on their more expensive models.

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Brazilian rosewood is beautiful and rare.  Also, Brazilian rosewood is far more difficult to inlay as compared to ebony. As I do all of my own inlay by hand, the higher price reflects the Style A inlay in the Brazilian rosewood.

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