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Interesting, I wish I could hear a 17″ jazz guitar from Santa Cruz. . . I’m finding arch tops , roy smecks, and jumbos are kind of what I gravitate to…. still love the H13 I started out on and my OM Grand, but these are the guitars in the past 4-5 years that I have really enjoyed playing at stores on road trips. If they made a 17″ archtop I would definitely think they’ve done a jumbo. No telling how much an archtop would cost now, probably as much as a 34?
Indeed, thanks for replying. . . we have been moving into a new house and I haven’t been active on the forum… I didn’t see those pictures. Very nice
I agree with you Zorro, I have LOVED the H13 and OM Grand that I’ve had but hated that I didn’t get them in mahogany or a larger body or something for strumming and singing. H13 didn’t have enough and the OM Grand did but projected too much. I look forward to finding the right Santa Cruz. I have wondered if there were any other makers like that out there myself, and have really looked into froggy as a possibility for that more Gibson style guitar since SC seems to go after more Martin style. I found it actually impossible to communicate with the builder but he is indeed a very nice man, it’s just like he is speaking portuguese and I’m speaking Japanese or something.
Had an h13 and loved it. Although I ordered it in EIR and wished I had done adirondack mahogany. Santa cruz does mahogany so well and I personally think it suits their voicing. The H13 is enchanting.
I sold it to get an OM Grand because I needed more airspace and more low end to support strumming and singing. Although the smaller Santa Cruz guitars are loud, I find they are not suited to all out gusto – more for ‘sensible’ playing. I think the H13 would do great for folk. Yes it has a deeper body.
For your first one… I would suggest going certainly for any upgrades you want. Adirondack, mahogany, hide glue… they build a great guitar but the upgrades take it all the way there to 100% in my opinion.
It does have a bluesy folky enchanting sound in the H13, different than OO
I have a telonics volume pedal and it is the only one that I was satisfied with … otherwise I don’t know I’d use one, the quality is absolutely fantastic, but I had to get the pro model, the standard chopped off too much low end. Get ready for the price tag though – 550
It’s actually over time because nearly the only model I’m super super interested in and my next model will be that after having an H 13 and OM Grand, just couldn’t feel enough air movement off either one, not big enough of a sound and I don’t like square shoulders much … the RS is really a sweet spot for me and based on my experience something santa cruz must do really well if the VS and my experience are any indications
That’s good to hear, I think it’s going to be a year or two before I get to CA since I did a US tour from Texas to Philly and back two different ways. That took about a month. Nice Jumbo stories 🙂
Daniel – yes that’s the sound I became accustomed to but when I was revisiting them recently over the past year or two trying to find something I enjoy singing over more I discovered quite a few custom shop ones that did not sound like that. It made me think perhaps they are not meant as a model to sound so thin and trebley because those were perfectly balanced to my ear. It seems more common to have the treble and thin sound, but it doesn’t seem rare to get a nice balanced one either. From what I can tell anyway, I have more road tripping to do and shops to visit.
Matt, so the 12 fret OOOO is actually the thing I most adamantly wanted Richard to do when building mine, and then secondly I had asked for a deep body. They rejected both at the time of building, I’m not sure if it’s because they just started building them a year before or what. I think the very most important thing would have been for it to have been 12 fret, followed by a slightly shorter scale…. I’m not sure if that would have done with a deep body or not, but it couldn’t have hurt I don’t suppose. I’ve thought about telling them after 5 years I still wish that they would have tried building it that way, selling it, and seeing if they’ll redo it. I’d rather just get an RS first and some type of Maple Jumbo if I can find one that sounds right. I do want Richard to build some type of 25″ roundabout or 25.25″ OOOO (the 12 fret) with adirondack and mahogany or african blackwood. The entire time I’ve had this, it has just needed a bit more of that 12 fret sound along with a bit more airspace. The only way to get the woods I have to open up a bit is to use 80/20, the phosphor bronze they sound overly rounded off. My wife says the Santa Cruz strings sound the most musical though despite not having any chime with my woods.
I’ll be excited to pursue that in the future, I want to fly out to Santa Cruz and chat about it in person. I was looking up the history of the martin F-7 flat top conversion, and if I’m not mistaken it was originally a 12 fret, not 14 fret. Carolyn said the cutaways have no sonic drawback, so since I like that sound I see no reason other than $$ to not go 12 fret with cutaway.
Woah that’s some nice pin striping!!!
I guess for the people that are interested in santa cruz I’m in the minority then of going after Roy Smeck, L-5s and SJ-200 type sounds if they haven’t had enough demand. Seems like that would be equally as popular as a dreadnought
Ah yes, I grew up in the age of the curse ‘explain everything’ – as music rips through my soul I feel the need to deconstruct it so I can rebuild it in a way that has a bigger statement for my perspective of the world with the pieces I like…. Luckily for about the first 17-20 years of my life I was lucky enough to grow up around a lot of 60s and 70s songs and listened to them for sheer pleasure and in total ignorance before I decided to pursue music. I credit that time as being very formative though for music dissection, it was a lot of music listening with no judgment
Thank you for chiming in, please feel free to share any opinions that come to you in the future 😀
