Finally! A Worthy Acoustic Baritone! The Alvarez ABT60e 8 String
I love the sound of baritone guitars. it’s not that I sing particularly well, but the sound and frequency fits my voice now that I have learned I was trying to sing in too high a register. Still, I am not a singer by any stretch, and the sound space of the baritone has always made me really comfortable. My first exposure was with my Gretsch Electromatic that is a double neck with the upper neck being baritone and the lower neck being a standard six string. It’s an odd looking critter but a complete tone joy. I currently own three baritone electrics and have sought a baritone acoustic for a while. I tried a few, the second most recent an 8 string from Taylor, a builder that I respect, and I have to say that for me, the whole experience was meh. I didn’t like the sound, the guitar felt awkward and my hand did not fit the neck carve. So it goes.
I had heard Alvarez guitars on the Anderton’s Acoustic Paradiso channel and even after massive YouTube compression, they still sounded quite good when using studio monitors. I recently got an email, informing me of a short sale from The Guitar Boutique in Bethany, Ontario, and the shop had great pricing, but more importantly had stock of multiple different baritone acoustics.
So I called to confirm and spoke with the owner, Mr. Nick Angelo (more about Nick further on) and he suggested that as he was less than two hours away from where I lived that I would be best served to come to the shop and try out a few. He was right.
I had been initially attracted to the gloss black model of this guitar, which is an 8 string baritone. Nick pulled out the Shadowburst first as it was most accessible and it sounded glorious to me. Big voice, but open and with great projection and overall tonal balance. He then retrieved the all black version. It fit me just as well as the Shadowburst, but perhaps in alignment with the colour, a gloss piano black on top and satin black on sides and back, it was considerably darker and boomier. He did have a 6 string baritone as well, but I really liked the octave ring of the 8 string and that filtered my choice. I played the two back to back and decided to purchase the Shadowburst 8 string baritone. It came in a nice padded soft case, with the requisite tools and I was quite happy as I prepared to come home and dig in.
Here’s where I hop onto my personal hobby horse. There was nothing wrong with the black guitar. I could have purchased it online, had it shipped to me and I would have very likely been happy. It still sounded better than anything else that I had tried. However, because I was in a real guitar store, I had the ability to compare different iterations of the very same model, and consequently was able to pick the right guitar for me. You cannot do that online, no matter what the mcmarketing says. Get thee to a REAL guitar shop.
About Nick Angelo
As you know, I don’t receive compensation for this site except the donations from Patreon members. Nick is older than I and has been in the industry for some time. His shop is not enormous and you will not find the usual suspects there. He carries Alvarez, Alvarez-Yairi, Cole Clark and Eastman acoustics that I saw. He also carries Revelation, Eastman, Heritage and Duesenberg electrics. His attitude is why carry the same stuff that everyone else carries. While this may fly in the face of those who think that the brand is most important, serious players already know that brand and quality are not necessarily synonymous.
Now here’s the really cool thing about Nick. In addition to his decades of industry experience as a live sound specialist, a recording engineer, a player and all the rest, in 1964, Nick played in a band called Les 4 Francaises, a pop band in Montreal Canada. Les 4 Francaises is the ONLY Canadian band ever to open for the Beatles and on the About Us page of his shop is a video made from a film shot by his father of the band opening for the Beatles at the Montreal Forum in 1964. There is also live footage of the Beatles as well as footage of them being interviewed in Montreal with the microphones holding the station identifiers I remember from my youth, with CFCF and CJAD visible. Yes there is absolutely an emotional connection created by the memory of my childhood, but the ability to see Nick and his band perform live and then be followed by the Beatles is magical. Nick generously gave me a copy of a black and white print of Les 4 Francaises with the Beatles laughing and smiling.
He is such a wonderful guy that it’s worth the trip just to meet him. His wife, Jane, is also a stellar person and I consider myself fortunate to have found the shop and say it was absolutely worth the backroads drive to his shop just outside of the village of Bethany Ontario. While I was there, a nice fellow called Simon popped in who was travelling for an event for his daughter from Vancouver Island and he had deposited his family at a coffee place in Bethany so he could visit The Guitar Boutique. If within driving distance, you should go. But be gracious and call ahead. While Nick is open seven days a week, it’s just respectful to give a call to let him know that you are coming.
UPDATE
You can watch a short film made by Nick’s father of the band opening for the Beatles.
Below you will find the photograph mentioned showing Nick and Les 4 Francais hamming it up with the Beatles
Back to the Guitar
Alvarez Guitars has multiple lines. Most of the guitars are designed in the United States and built in China, but the Yairi line are serious high end instruments made in Japan. I was not there for a Yairi but did play one off the wall, and the fit, finish and tonality was awesome. My baritone is from the Alvarez Artist family. The model ABT-60e is the Shadowburst finish of the 8 string variant of the baritone.
Specifications
I have screen captured the specifications for the guitar from the Alvarez site to avoid typing it all out and to eliminate my own errors.
As you can see, the top is solid Sitka Spruce. I will not say it is spectacularly figured, but it is completely clean with no knots or flaws and the wale of the wood is nicely parallel. It taps out really nicely except in the cutaway which is expected. The back and sides are laminated from three pieces of African Mahogany. The sides are nice and stiff and the body taps with a beautiful and consistent ring. This laminate does not contain other woods or any filler, and you can tell right away. Indian Laurel is used for the headstock facing and fretboard and looks great and is beautifully finished. The fretwork is superb on the Mahogany neck without fret sprout in any areas. The nut and saddle are real bone, and the bridge pins are synthetic bone. The guitar arrived from the factory wearing D’Addario EXP 23 strings and I was pleased to find that they were in excellent condition and did not need to be changed on purchase. There is a benefit when a guitar arrives new with good strings, something some better known makers could do to learn. I am speaking to you Fender and Gibson.
My fingers are not as long as I might prefer, and yet the slightly wider fingerboard which is 1 ¾ at the nut is perfectly playable to me. The neck carve is a slightly thicker C, as one would expect for the increased tension of the baritone strings and their longer 27 23/32 inch scale length. After over an hour of playing, no cramping and no arthritis pain for me. I call this a solid win.
The pickup included is an LR Baggs StagePro Bronze. As best I can tell, this is the LR Baggs StagePro preamp with under saddle Element. According to the documentation, the entire unit is the pickup element and the side mounted preamp which has volume, bass, mid, treble controls, a phase inverter and a notch filter as well as an FET based preamp. The battery is accessible from the side panel so no fishing inside the body when it is time to make a change. There is also a built in tuner, and the tuner is good enough to handle the low B of a baritone. This is important because a lot of those clip on headstock tuners go to lunch when asked to tune below low E or perhaps drop D.
The tuning machines are unlabeled and work fine with no lash. They are a bit stiffer than a set of real Grovers or Graph-Techs but are certainly good enough to be going on with.
How Does It Sound?
Acoustically this guitar sounds wonderful. It is rich, open and impressively loud without ever being boomy or nasal in any way. Compared to other acoustic baritones that I have played, including the three times the price Taylor, this wins out by a long stretch. When plugged in to my AER Tommy Emmanuel amplifier, it sounds like the unamplified guitar only louder which impresses me enormously given that under saddle elements usually brings the expected but unwanted piezo nasal tone and quack.
Just to be clear, whenever I plug an acoustic guitar into an acoustic amp I use a device to convert the output from high impedance to low impedance which gives me much longer cable run length and in my opinion, improves the overall sound of ANY acoustic guitar pickup. For those curious, I heartily recommend the Radial SB-4 StageBug Piezo. The only thing is that your amp must have an XLR input option and be able to provide 48v Phantom Power. I will say that this is less necessary when there is a solid on board preamp as in this guitar, but I call it mandatory when there is no preamp in the guitar or mounted outboard at the output jack.
My conclusion on this point is if you are playing in a smaller venue and even in a coffee shop, you might be fine without any sound reinforcement. If you are playing a larger venue, running the Alvarez direct to your mixing board and PA is going to be all you need.
Example Sounds
For this example, I played the guitar into an Aston Origin condenser microphone and did not use the built in pickup. The microphone was connected to a Universal Audio Apollo Solo. I used Universal Audio’s LUNA DAW for the recording with an API 2500 console, configured using an acoustic guitar preset. I added a bus with an EMT-140 plate reverb and sent a portion of the direct single to that bus to add some space. The final track used API Summing to bring the main track and the bus track together and the final package was mastered using a Universal Audio LA-6176 Dynamics Processor. The final was mixed down to an MP3 at highest quality using Variable Bit Rate encoding.
Wrapping Up
I love the sound and playability of this guitar. In my opinion it surpasses in tone and playability far more expensive acoustic baritones and while some may prefer the six string version over the eight string version, I prefer the eight string. Those two octave strings on the A and D pairs provide some air and spark and the overall frequency response makes this an ideal instrument for a singer songwriter, particularly if the singer works in the baritone range as I do. I suspect that the guitar would provide a solid foundation as well for a high tenor or soprano singer as well as its response would sit nicely underneath without competing in any way.
After a lengthy search for an acoustic baritone, I am extremely pleased. I recommend this instrument highly. I also highly recommend that if you want to purchase one for yourself, that you reach out to Nick Angelo at The Guitar Boutique in Bethany Ontario. You can buy through the website and also on Reverb if you so choose.
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