NANGD (cedar dreadnought)

Tannin

A long time ago last week in a galaxy thread far, far two clicks away there was discussion on the question "Can a parlour be an only guitar?" The consensus answer was "No, not really" . (A dissenting minority said "I don't understand. What is an only guitar?")

So let's go through my little collection - no parlours to be found - and see which of them might make a good only guitar.

Seeing as I've bored you all with interminable new guitar threads for half of my collection, so why not put everyone completely to sleep with a bit of a look at the other half? 

I'll start with a particular favourite which is special in a number of ways. It is the guitar I've had for longest (nearly five years now), it is the only dreadnought, the only one with a cedar top; it is by far the least fussy about strings, it was the cheapest to buy, and is the one worth the least should I want to sell it one day. (I don't.) And it's quite possibly my favourite.

MATON'S SRS SERIES

The SRS Series is Maton's bread and butter standard level. There are seven models which these days go for around $2000 (£1050) or $2100 (£1100) new here in Australia, but a lot more in the UK (£1850ish - guitars generally and Matons especially are expensive in the UK). Build spec and quality-wise, an SRS is on a level with a Furch Blue or a Martin 15/16/17; a cut above a Gibson Generation or a Taylor 2 Series, a step below a Gibson Studio model or a 3 Series Taylor. 

There are two body shapes, dreadnought and 808. Timbers are normally Sitka Spruce over either Blackwood or Queensland Maple. Trim level is basic but practical: the binding is very plain but the key point is that there is indeed binding. (This new caper of Gibson's - making not-so-very-cheap guitars without any binding at all just to chisel a few pennies of the production cost and never mind that there is nothing to protect the instrument from knocks and dents - completely sucks.) 

The SRS60C slots into the middle of the SRS range, above the cheapie S60 (Queensland Maple) and S70 (Blackwood) dreadnoughts which have neither pickup nor cutaway. As standard, it has Maton's older AP5 pickup system. Nearly all other Matons use the current-generation AP5 Pro. 

Mine is different and a bit special. Ten years ago, Melbourne retailer Cranbourne Music marked their 25th anniversary by asking Maton to build 25 special edition guitars, SRS60Cs but with Western Red Cedar tops and AP5 Pro pickups. Mine is #19 out of the 25. A Ballarat music retailer who is a bit of a collector on the side bought one for himself. It spent the next five years sitting in his back room as a case queen until February 2019 when, on a whim, he sold it to me for $2300 (£1,200). 

It was more-or-less my only guitar for the next year or so - my ancient plywood Yamaha 12-string https://www.thefretboard.co.uk/discussion/233860/ogd was still around but seldom played once the Maton arrived. 

A year or so later I got the guitar-buying bug seriously and bought first a Cole Clark Angel 3 and a few months later Maton's top-of-range factory guitar, the Messiah. For a little while the cedar-top dreadnought went largely unplayed and at one stage I actually offered to give it to my brother. (!)  Instead, one day, I took it into Hobart's leading luthier together with the new Cole Clark, and asked him  if he could make the Maton play as well as the Angel. Within ten minutes Paul had filed the nut, sanded the saddle, and decided to leave the truss rod as-was.  Properly set-up now, the cedar dred went from being pleasant enough to play to being a genuine  joy. (Having got to know Paul and his work I soon got into the habit of taking any new guitar to him for a setup, and as time went by I ended up buying two of his lovely hand-made guitars.)

Oh - and "NANGD" stands for "not a new guitar day"

Tannin

THE TIMBERS

As we know, Western Red Cedar makes an excellent topwood: it is the lightest wood commonly used to make guitars, and easily the softest.
 

I have seen many attempts to describe the sound of cedar as compared to spruce and they add up to a complete dog's breakfast. One chap describes it as "darker" the next says it is "brighter with sweet trebles". They can't both be right! But they are both right if we correctly interpret what they are trying to say. Cedar does indeed have sweet, clear, open trebles (sweeter and clearer than most spruces) but it also has significantly less attack. You don't get as pronounced a transient and this smoother, more legato sound is what makes it seem "dark" to some listeners.

If you need more attack and percussive action in your playing (think bluegrass), a cedar top will take you in exactly the wrong direction. If you need a smoother, classier sound, it's very hard to go past it. 

Queensland Maple has nothing at all to do with maple, it's a Flindersia. (Yes, it was quite stupid to put "maple" into the name but we seem to be stuck with it now.)

The Flindersia genus is native to Australia and some nearby islands; all except one of the 15 or so species grow in rainforests. The family Flindersia belongs to also includes the genus Citrus (oranges, lemons and similar), the curry leaf tree that is so central to Indian and Sri Lankan cuisine, and various others. (The mahogany family is distantly related.) Queensland Maple grows in the rainforests of Queensland and while all logging of native rainforest has long since been banned - and rightly so, there is very little left  - it is readily available from plantation stocks put in by far-sighted government foresters many years ago. 

It is the most neutral and versatile of tonewoods. I like to describe it as the timber equivalent of a plain white shirt - you can wear it  anywhere, it works with anything (jeans, shorts, a casual suit, a dress suit), and it always looks good - well, sounds good in the case of Queensland Maple: it is quite a plain looking timber, fairly light in colour and typically with a fine, straight grain. It is stable and easy to work; it is slightly lighter and softer than Honduran Mahogany but with slightly higher stiffness. 

^ Queensland Maple back, sides and neck. 

Tonally, its great strength is that it doesn't colour the sound, it is very even and forgiving. Some tonewoods immediately grab your attention with a special sound - the crisp top end of Rock Maple, the warm snap of Blackwood, the rich lushness of rosewood - and that can be a lot of fun.

But there is also a lot to be said for unobtrusive tonewoods, woods which make the music the focus rather than the sound. It is no accident that great players like Tommy Emmanuel and Michael Fix play guitars with Queensland Maple backs. Tommy in particular plays a huge range of different styles and his guitar just does whatever he asks. Horse people talk about "bidability". A horse with bidability is one which doesn't simply do what you ask, it actively cooperates and works with you to get you where you want to go. Queensland Maple has bidability. 

It's a good neck timber too. Maton use a lot of Queensland Maple for necks; Cole Clark don't use anything else. Oddly enough, neither of the big two companies make Queensland Maple tops. There seems to be no obvious reason for that: it is readily available, stable, easy to work, and right in the sweet spot so far as weight, hardness, and stiffness go. Several individual luthiers and smaller makers use it for tops, but I have yet to play an example. 

Tannin

Maton is phasing out rosewood in favour of more sustainable timbers, but this guitar was made in 2014 when they were still using it as routine for fretboards and bridges. Most (but not all) current-model Matons now use either ebony or Mulga. Mine was as-new when I bought it in 2019 but now it's showing considerable signs of wear - as you can see. The frets, however, are still in excellent shape. Are they lasting better because I don't bend notes much? Or for some other reason? They are ordinary nickel-steel, probably Dunlop 6260.




^ Binding is very plain but nevertheless serves to protect the soft cedar from accidental damage.




^ I know people who sneer at Grover tuners (and indeed at most of the other makes!) but I have never had the slightest trouble with them on any of my various Matons, nor on my two Cole Clarks which use the same make. Pushed to pick a favourite, I'd nominate Gotoh 510s, but honestly the difference is neither here nor there. 




^ For reasons best known to themselves, Maton habitually decorate their lower-end models with a large, tacky 70s-look logo sticker and an ugly Sapele headstock veneer. Sapele can look perfectly decent as a back timber, but Maton don't use it for anything else bar headstock veneers and rosettes. Mind you, I reckon it looks great on the rosette (see the second picture in this thread) so there you go.

So how does it play? I reckon the fretboard wear in the picture a post or two above is a bit of a hint! I play this one a lot.

I have eased back on it a bit this last year or two though. As I get older I'm sometimes finding the big dreadnought body a bit of a trial for my right arm and shoulder (which it wasn't even 5 years ago) and I've learned not to pick this guitar up first thing in the morning. I warm up playing one of the smaller-body ones and then (if I feel like it) switch.

I used to use it as my #1 practice instrument (so as not to put so much wear on the more expensive ones when I'm only trying stuff out and playing exercises). After a bit of that I bought a second-hand Guild to practice on (well, partly for that) and just played this one for pleasure. Now I have so many guitars that I have stopped worrying about wear. I just play them, and practice on the first one I happen to pick up. Life is short!

The Maton is louder than most of my guitars (though not particularly loud for a dreadnought) but unobtrusive - that magic combination of cedar and Queensland Maple takes the harsh edge off the sound and Mrs Tannin seldom objects to me playing this one.It's good for any style of music that I play. I don't think it would be ideal for a loud strummer with a hard pick but I often dig right in with my nails and it copes with that just fine.

It is remarkably unfussy about strings. So far I've had 22 different makes and types on it and only two or three of those were problematic - the Martin Retros (which can be great on the right guitar) worked with the cedar like salt in coffee; the Dunlop Phosphor Bronze would have  been just as bad on any other guitar, and the ultra-cheap Ekos were ... well, ultra-cheap. It works well with brass strings and is at its best with pretty much any decent phosphor bronze set. My favourites for it are the very classy GHS Americana - strings that sound a little too bright and shallow on most guitars but really shine on the big, gentle dreadnought. 

Overall, this remains one of my first-choice guitars. Most of the others are higher-end models worth two or three times as much , really lovely instruments, but the inexpensive cedar Maton more than holds its own and still gets played almost every day. I sometimes wish it was less bulky under my arm (an 808 or a grand auditorium, say), and I'd rather it was dressed up a bit more (it would look so much better with a nicer headstock!) but what does that matter?

Every few months I go over to the other island for a few weeks and for space reasons take just a single guitar. They have all had trips across the water, but the one I end up taking more often than any of the others is this one. So would it make a good only guitar? Yes.