This northwest builder says: “My guitars blend time honored traditions with state of the art innovation but it's not the traditional hide glue or the contemporary carbon fiber struts that make my guitars special. It's the passion, the training, and the 30 years of experience I bring to this craft. Plus the hide glue and carbon fiber. And the wood of course: every piece hand-picked and well seasoned. My guitars are responsive to the player and I am responsive to my clients. I enjoy working with players to build the perfect instrument for their style of music and their touch. It's a great job and I am grateful to the clients who enable me to keep building and, together, put more music into the world.” A student of the styles of Dake Traphagen, the techniques of Frank Ford, the designs of Charles Fox and Ervin Somogyi, Chasson comes from a background in woodworking. He started building his own guitars in 1995 and works at an extremely high level of precision and “repeatability” (we like that) while building unique instruments one at a time. This particular body shape is quite comfortable, fitting the body nicely -- similar to a classical guitar. Its sound is lively, resonant and long-sustaining, while putting forth excellent midrange and surprisingly deep bass for such a small guitar. This instrument, which is dated July 2009 on its signed interior paper label, was shown at the Healdsburg Guitar Festival in August 2009. There are photos from the show on Chasson’s website.

This is a long scale (25.4” guitar with a 1 ¾” fingerboard width at the nut, 2 ¼” string spacing at the bridge. The back and sides are made of magnificently grained Claro Walnut – it displays both strong vertical contrast, light brown to dark, but also a great deal of horizontal curly grain as well. It proffers a Western Red Cedar top, dark and closely parallel grained, with a modest and yet original rosette that features twin continuous rings of light colored arrows against a dark background separated by dark purfling. The headplate appears to be East Indian rosewood of the highest quality, though it could be some other, more exotic wood. Speaking of exotic – the back of the neck is made from Khaya wood, the bridge, polished headplate and gloriously pretty fingerboard from the reddish-brown, colorful Cocobolo and the body bindings are most unusual Leopardwood. Where does he find this stuff? Khaya is also known as African Mahogany, and Leopardwood (flindersia maculosa or “Flindy” as it is known to its friends) grows in New South Wales and Queensland, Australia. It has a spotted bark that is both unusual and memorable. The Chasson fingerboard hosts 6 pearl dotmarkers in 5 positions, with side dots in the same sequence. The bridge saddle, which, like the nut, is presumed bone, is polished and smooth. The saddle is wide, but you can cross o’er.

This builder utilizes several proprietary ideas including a special neck adjustment bolt in the neck block that allows the player to change the action, to adjust for seasonal changes in humidity, while leaving the saddle at its optimum height, a cantilevered fingerboard, a wing-shaped sound port on the upper bass side and a system of internal carbon fiber struts that support the form of the instrument while adding almost no weight. There is an excellent discussion of the guitar's design and capabilities to be found at this link:  http://www.chassonguitars.com/design.html

This guitar is lighter than most, weighing only 3 pounds 12 ounces (by comparison, a Martin 000-28EC weighs 4 pounds, 4 ounces). We present to our ever-curious customers a new brand of guitar, and a highly engaging one. Behold the combination of beauty, brawn and brains – no wait, that’s Christie Brinkley, I meant bountiful beauty, overt originality, major mellifluousness and bona fide brilliance for only: