Got new Lowden guitar - unexpected positive side effects

**Dagger Gordon** · May-13-2012, 2:29pm

Well I have got a new guitar. A Lowden - you can see it here actually.

http://www.ivormairants.co.uk/lowden...-rosewood.html

I tried it in London back in December and kept thinking I should have bought it. I realised that it was still in the shop in late March and reckoned it was just waiting for me, so I bought it without any further delay.

Fantastic guitar. I can do things on it which I simply couldn't do before on other guitars.

So I hardly touch the mandolin for a few weeks because I'm working out on this great new guitar, but when I get to playing mandolin again, you know what - I think I've actually got better in the interim. Flatpicking the guitar way up the neck seems to have done my pinky muscles in particular a bit of good!

So I now wonder what to do with a Fylde guitar which we have around the house and which looks to becoming redundant, and decide it might as well be kept in a different tuning. I used to play in open G on the guitar a few years ago but don't do it that much these days, so I thought I would leave it in that tuning and see what happened. Put the capo on the second fret and you have open A - which seems to suit the old Fylde far better than standard and is great for Scottish pipe tunes! And now I can't stop playing the old Fylde!

So, by buying a new guitar I seem to have got multiple benefits. Love the new guitar, am enjoying old guitar more and find my mandolin playing has actually got better.

Sometimes you need a wee shake-up, and this seems to have been a great success.

Happy Dagger!

**Markus** · May-13-2012, 4:29pm

Lovely new guitar, a new instrument can really rejuvenate the joy of music, make working out the little playing problems more fun.

I am mando-less for a few weeks (1 week in) and have enjoyed pulling the guitar I have left idle for a couple years out. I am surprised the songs that come to mind and fingers, stuff I haven't played in a while. Put the guitar in my hands, lyrics come right back - funny how it works.

I have a lot of work to get back to 'ok', poor consolation when I miss my mandolin ... yet it is lovely to work with a different palette and set of finger patterns. The same old landscape looks different.

I hope I find the advances you have, I have little doubt I will find a few weeks of joy playing mandolin after a hiatus. Hearing with different ears always seems to be a positive, adds a little spice to what had grown plain.

Thanks for your new guitar story, it is good to remember how many ways we become better musicians.

**Steve L** · May-13-2012, 10:45pm

Dagger, I've had a Lowden 010 for about 8 years now and to this day, when I take it out of the case and hear the first thing I play, I'm astonished by the sound that comes out of it. Congratulations.

**Caleb** · May-14-2012, 9:24pm

Love Lowdens. Congrats on the new guitar.

**almeriastrings** · May-14-2012, 11:33pm

Back in the early 80's, when I was involved in the tonewood industry, I used to select and cut those Cedar tops for George Lowden. He always did know how to get the best out of them. The rosewood + cedar combinations are fabulous guitars. Very responsive and warm, yet with percussive 'cut'. They record beautifully, too. George is working by himself again now, after the ill-fated 'Avalon' and various larger-scale production experiments. That said, some of those were fine guitars in their own right.

**Ivan Kelsall** · May-15-2012, 12:22am

It seems as though you made a good choice there David. The original Lowdens are almost ledgendary for their tone. I'm no great shakes as a Guitar player,but i've finger-picked a few Lowdens & they've always been wonderful to play. A couple of months ago, i was in one of my favourite music stores in Manchester,they had a beautiful looking Lowden for sale. If i hadn't been scared to show myself up,i'd have had that one off it's stand for a half hour or so - glorious instruments !,
Ivan

**wildpikr** · May-15-2012, 6:58am

Nice guitar...temporary relief from GAS!

**John Kelly** · May-15-2012, 2:04pm

You are so right about the guitar and its effects on your playing, Dagger! I acquired a Lowden O32 a few years ago and it is my regular companion and always attracts very positive comments whenever it is on show and in hearing. The mandolin, the octave and the bouzouki all contribute to my guitar playing and certainly the guitar does this to the other three, so we end up benefiting from the combined efforts we make on those instruments.

**trevor** · May-16-2012, 3:56am

Dagger, There's nothing like a new instrument to fire up the enthusiasm..

**Dagger Gordon** · May-16-2012, 4:22am

Indeed, Trevor!

And cheers to everyone else.

Almeriastrings, I was very interested in your comments that you selected and cut Lowden's cedar tops. I find that in general cedar suits me. My Sobell instruments have cedar tops, though I often get the feeling that most people prefer spruce. (Though having said that, I think the Collings MT I got from Trevor has a spruce top. )

Where does he get his wood from (or is it confidential? !!!)

**Bertram Henze** · May-16-2012, 5:16am

Originally Posted by Steve L

...when I take it out of the case and hear the first thing I play, I'm astonished by the sound that comes out of it.

That's what makes a good instrument: its actual sound should always be better than the sound you remember from your last playing it.

Originally Posted by trevor

Dagger, There's nothing like a new instrument to fire up the enthusiasm..

...yeees, but it better be a good one, or else there's nothing like it to fire up the chimney

**Dagger Gordon** · May-16-2012, 6:59am

Oh it's a good one all right!

I'm not really a man who changes his instruments much, but the Lowden 'spoke to me' as they say.

Another more sombre reason is that I have just turned 59 (where did my life go - can hardly believe it.). Doing the maths, I will be 75 in 16 years time and I have to assume I might be slowing up a bit by then! So if I want a better guitar and want to get good use out of it, there's no time to waste.....

**Stamper** · May-22-2012, 7:54am

You know, I had a Lowden -- I think it was the F32, does that sound right? I forget the number, but it was rosewood with that thick spruce top, a cutaway. I LOVED that guitar. I mean I've never heard anything like it (though Lowdens do seem to me to come from a similar language: you can recognize the region of the voice). Anyway, I loved it. And then four years ago thieves came into my house and stole it (along with two other guitars and my cameras). Killed me: everything else I could let go of, but the Lowden? It hurt, losing that. And hearing your enthusiasm, I'm thinking, geese, maybe it's time to go back. My understanding is GL is making fewer, having been pushed out of the corporate company, and so these past five or six years he's been making fewer than, say, the years during which the vintage of mine was made. What I mean to say: Life is Short, and How Long Will They Be Around? (You can tell I'm trying to talk myself into it as I type).

I love the hand polish of those guitars, too. I know it's cosmetic, but it sends me: so subtle and rich. And the orange / amber tuner knobs! Rock 'n Roll --

Anyway, I'm happy for you, that's for certain. I really am --

**almeriastrings** · May-22-2012, 8:18am

Originally Posted by Dagger Gordon

Where does he get his wood from (or is it confidential? !!!)

I wouldn't know these days... but back in the early 80's he used to get them from the Tonewood supplier I worked for. He was always very particular and had high standards. Rob Armstrong (Coventry), Mike Vanden, and Jimmy Moon (Glasgow) were other well respected luthiers we worked with regularly back then.