We were fortunate to have, within the past year,
discovered Kent Chasson of Bellingham,
Washington. Every guitar he has sent us has been
tear-your-heart-out brilliant, with a degree of sonority and presence that
makes every player say (usually out loud) “this guitar is totally amazing – one
of the finest six-string instruments I have ever played!” This brand new one is no exception. Its resonance, transparency, and high level
of acoustic fidelity to an idealized notion of what a guitar should sound like
is without peer in our temple of plectral dependency.
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 trenchant treatments of Dake Traphagen, the
fastidiousness of Frank Ford, the felicitous fabrications of Charles Fox and
the sophistication of 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 June 2010 on its signed interior paper label, smells so good –
that aromatic blend of cedar and graphite is suddenly intoxicating and comes
close to making us swoon in a frenzy of impassioned ecstasy.
This is a long scale, 25.4” nut to saddle, 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 on the back as well.
It proffers a Western Red Cedar top, dark and closely parallel grained,
featuring medium brown vertical lines betwixt the light brown, with a modest
and yet original rosette that features three rings of leopardwood. Exotic and scarce, one source says that it’s
from Chile and Brazil,
also called “Brazilian Lacewood,” or Roupala
brasilensis to its friends. This
wood tends to be dark pink to medium brown and has a speckled figure with
darker flecks. As John Lithgow used to
say on Third Rock, “It’s gor-geous!”.
The body bindings and heel cap are made from the same stuff. There is, however, a bit of a controversy as
another source says that Leopardwood is actually Flindersia maculosa, and grows in New South
Wales and Queensland, Australia.
The tree from which it emanates has a spotted bark that is both unusual and
memorable. It has the famous Chasson “all
seeing eye” style supplemental sound port on the upper bass side, so that the
player can hear the sound one-ten thousandth of a second before the
audience. This can come in especially
handy when playing songs with rapid and unexpected chord changes.
The headplate and neck binding 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.
Where does he find this stuff?
Khaya is also known as African Mahogany.
The Chasson fingerboard, made from lovely, colorful Cocobolo, hosts 6
pearl dotmarkers in 5 positions, with side dots in the same sequence. The
carved bridge is also Cocobolo and its saddle, which, like the nut, is presumed
bone, is polished and smooth.
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, 11.8 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. It bestows its
owner the perfect combination of bountiful beauty, overt originality, major
mellifluousness and bona fide brilliance.
If you would be interested in our having Mr. Chasson build you, say, one
in some other size or fourteen fret, just let us know.