Wildwood Guitars | 6 years ago
Wildwoodians, let me let you in on a secret: for staff members, staying late at Wildwood Guitars is a recipe for disaster. Our shop is a wonderland for guitar nerds, but during the workday our incredible inventory rarely distracts us from our work for longer than a couple of minutes. But, if you are foolish enough to stick around after things quiet down, you’re liable to pick up a guitar--like, say, a Lowden F-50 with a killer koa top--and start strumming away.
This is a mistake, because then inspiration strikes, and you start working on your ideas in earnest, and you come up with a couple nifty progressions, and you start to wonder what the guitar would sound like in Open D, and it of course sounds like a twenty foot tall woody piano, then you start trying to learn some new licks in Open D, and pretty soon you look up at the clock and it’s 6:50 and everyone else is gone and you still have thousands of words to write about Lowden acoustic guitars.
If it sounds like I’m speaking from direct experience, I am! This Lowden’s incredible tone may have thrown a monkey wrench into my Friday evening, but I’m not even mad, because playing it is an utterly addictive experience. Let’s take a closer look and talk about the characteristics that make it a black hole into which your free time will disappear!
This guitar sounds delicious enough to require me to use a food metaphor to capture its essence. Imagine a simple bar of chocolate, hand-baked by some kindly elderly gentleman from some small village in Switzerland. It doesn’t have many ingredients--it is just chocolate, and chocolate is pretty simple--but it nevertheless has all sorts of flavorful nuances and complexities that cause you to reflect upon and appreciate what you are tasting as you savor every last bite.
Hitting an open chord on this Lowden F-50 is not unlike biting into this fictitious Swiss Chocolate bar. It’s warm and rich, certainly, but you can hear every ingredient clearly: the powerful fundamental in the bass and low-midrange, the vocal timbre of the upper midrange, and the veritable bouquet of complex, beautiful overtones that bloom above it all in the lush trebles.
The real magic, though, lies in how easily and naturally all these ingredients coalesce in pretty much any situation. Lay into the guitar with a flatpick, and you’ll be rewarded with the sort of full, midrange-forward tone that recording engineers and singer-songwriters alike dream of. Ease off and strum some jazzy chords with a daintier touch and you’ll get the sort of mellow, warm sound perfect for sittin’ on the dock of the bay wastin’ time or comping the chords to some jazz standards.
Or, if you’re more of a fingerpicker, thump your way through a couple of acoustic blues tunes and sit astonished at the touch-sensitivity of the koa top. If folk’s more your style, tune to DADGAD and go nuts with ringing open-string riffs with close or even dissonant intervals--this marvelous guitar has the chops to clearly reproduce whatever strange harmonic ideas you can dream up.
The point is this: most simple things reveal their infinite hidden complexities when you hold them up under a microscope. I could spend hours delving into this Lowden’s myriad sonic delights--and I certainly have, at this point--but that would be missing the point. It is the sonic equivalent of delicious artisan chocolate, and it brings me simple joy whenever I play it. Though this Lowden may compel you to play for hours and make you late for important things, it’s a small price to pay for such a sweet sound.
Site: https://wildwoodguitars.com/product/22027/50-series-f-50/
Facebook: http://on.fb.me/11aLDN5
Serial Number: 22027
Brand Lowden Guitars
Model 50 Series F-50
Top Wood Highly Figured Koa
Back & Sides Wood Highly Figured Koa
Lower Bout 15.8"
Body Depth 4.7"
Neck Wood 5 Piece - Mahogany/Rosewood
Neck Measurements .840 1st - .890 9th
Fingerboard Ebony
Scale Length 25.5"
Width at Nut 1 3/4"
Nut Material Bone
Binding Ebony
Rosette Abalone/Koa
Tuners Gotoh SG381 Gold w/ Ebony Buttons
Bridge Rosewood
Saddle Bone
Pickguard Clear, In Case Pocket
Case Lowden Branded Ameritage
