#1107, model nylon string cutaway guitar, in near mint condition with original super deluxe hard shell case.
Delwyn J. Langejans (pronounced “Langens”) is a luthier who hand crafts everything from his reversible “Dualette” to his Dyer-inspired harp guitars. His ancestors hailed from the town of Bentheim, Germany but he was raised and born (not necessarily in that order) in Holland, MI. He has built instruments for such luminaries as the dexterous Thom Bresh, the fabulous Phil Keaggy, of course for mega-melodic picker Earl Klugh, a guy named Peter Frampton, and others. His dad is a builder of houses and Del was raised in a woodworking environment, where family members came home at all hours of the day and night with sawdust on their clothing. While in the US Navy Delwyn played accordion and guitar for his shipmates and, once his service ended he got a job at a music store in Holland, MI where he learned the craft of instrument repair. He started building in 1971, the same year that Mandolin Brothers was founded, oddly enough, and his original brand name was “Del’s.” As of 2006 he had produced over 1,200 instruments, many custom ordered - including a harp guitar for Muriel Anderson. The Dualette, for example, is a two-sided guitar that was custom made for Bresh - on one side is a steel string-guitar and on the other it is a nylon-string. This model guitar as we are currently holding before you in a most enticing manner was originally designed for jazzer Earl Klugh, whose recorded work inspires us all, and its design is unique and elegant in many ways.
It displays a most unusual design, having an extremely long (intentional, stylistically bold) drop-off cutaway after the 12th fret (which fret by the way is inlaid “EK” in abalone for the famous jazz fingerstyle guitarist who shares the same name as this model. It features fancy flame maple bindings around the sides and the headstock, but the ebony fretboard is either unbound or bound in gloss ebony. Mr. Langejans makes this model with a zero fret, an offset headstock shape that resembles a cresting wave, the oval soundhole is bordered in a double abalone inlay separated by a red centerpiece, and then black-white-black on each side. The top is likewise bordered. The backstripe and the end graft are an inlaid red wooden stripe, possibly padouk. The headstock looks like striped ebony; the bridge is long and large and black ebony and hosts the L. R. Baggs Duet II pickup system with six individual brass colored hexaphonic pickups. The control panel on the bass side for the Duet II has sliders for “low,” “mid” and “high,” rotaries for the balance of pickup and mic and volume, and a toggle for battery on-battery off and, we think, phase (the legend looks like the planet Neptune). A gold-plated strap pin is inserted in the back of the heel with a felt washer, and the end jack doubles as a strap button. Its tuners are gold plated mini-Grovers.
The action on this guitar is unbelievably low – when played by a standard fingerpicker one may experience buzzing on the bass strings, but when played in the style of Earl Klugh (the lightest jazz touch) there is no buzzing at all. Of course we can set it up for the more common attack, but it’s such fun to play with its delightfully low action that we hesitate to do so unless _you_ want us to. This a professional quality classical electric-acoustic cutaway with a cutaway so deep (if you don’t watch your step you can step off at the 12th fret and find yourself all the way down at the 16th, wondering how you got there), a truly gorgeous light colored and parallel grained spruce top that could be German and East Indian rosewood sides and back. The fretboard measures 2” at the zero fret and the string spacing at the saddle is a generous 2 5/16th”. Standard features include the side position dots, ebony overlays on both sides of the headstock, binding on the headstock. Options include gold-plated small tuners, that the Baggs Duet II pickup is equipped with hex pickups, and that it has an optional “Bas-Lang” company black custom hard shell case. We do want to point out that the way the guitar left the Langejans studio the builder had utilized a shim (as the old song goes, “Ain’t That a Shim”) under the nut and also left a small evidence of glue on the bass side of the nut. Notwithstanding that extremely small, not terribly visible aberration, this is a wonderful (previously owned but almost unplayed) instrument that will afford the jazz musician who gets to own it decades of euphoric expression.
Our Discount Price is $5,150.00 and Our Cash Discount Price is $4,995.00.
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