We present our second Kent Chasson
guitar from
the exceptional string wizard of Bellingham,
Washington. This is brand new, signed on the interior paper label in November, 2009. It takes the form of a Custom Dreadnought having Brazilian rosewood back and sides,
a special rosette, a magnificent Cocobolo fingerboard and a Brazilian bridge and it
is housed in an Ameritage hard shell case.
This sublime six-string, no matter what your
expectations, is different - it’s not
your grandfather’s high-end dreadnought in that it sustains like the wail
of a steam-driven train barreling across the Canadian Rockies on a crisp late
afternoon the early fall, as it passes through such glorious natural wonders as
one might see in Banff, Jasper, Yoho, Glacier, Kootenay and, yes, Bugaboo. It is light in weight and made of the finest
and rarest materials to which a luthier can aspire. Its voice is wholly transparent – sensitive
to the slightest touch and yet, when played with fervor and intensity, it
illuminates the night sky with pyrotechnics. The deep bass that one associates
with a dreadnought is definitely there, but the mids are a cornucopia of
complexity and the highs shimmer in the music room long after the note is
played, like aluminum foil confetti.
The builder says: “Okay, I did
find out that this Brazilian once took the form of beams in the ceiling of
a building, and also that this beam wood has been carbon-dated and the tree was
cut between 1865 and 1904. It probably
came from a farm building or warehouse.”
We responded by saying that, when you think about it, "warehouse"
is just a typo away from that other type of house where the stride piano
playing never stops, and the carmine hue floral pattern wallpaper is deeply
etched with the tactile promise of all that waits inside, much as one might say about this very instrument.
The soundhole rosette
on this guitar is unique – it is comprised of three semi-circles of snakewood
with a two-ply border of bloodwood. The
body bindings on this instrument are leopardwood – and if that's not sensual, I
don't know what is. Imagine –
snakewood, bloodwood and leopardwood in the same instrument! It’s like spending the night camped out on
the summit of a hill, deep in the savannah on the plains of Tanzania.
Kent says that the
figure in this Brazilian, up the center of the back, looks like a flame,
and we can’t disagree. The back and
sides are dramatically figured – a chiaroscuro of dark chocolate against a creamy
mocha swirly and variegated background – it is a physical actualization of an
idealized choice of fine tone woods, as well as a fine hot latte with whipped
cream. This guitar sums up the word
“sumptuous.”
Wise words from the
Builder: The first thing people notice
when they look inside a Chasson
is a triangular truss of carbon fiber tubes inside the box. This is a
lightweight but very strong structure meant to counteract the rotational forces
of the neck. Medium gauge strings impart about 180 pounds of force on a guitar
and this structure helps prevent the kind of long-term deformation that's often
seen in older guitars, or their players. On a conventional guitar, some of the
neck load is supported by the fingerboard extension and a large brace underneath
it. The truss design eliminates the need for the fingerboard to carry a load
and allows me to float the fingerboard above the top. This frees the upper bout
to vibrate, adding a significant amount of acoustically active real estate to
the top. With the fingerboard free of the top, it's now possible to make the
neck angle adjustable with the turn of a screw. This allows the player to make
seasonal adjustments to the action while leaving the saddle at it's optimum
height. There are a couple of the ways Chasson
reduces weight. He recently started using capped kerfed linings. The
black veneer cap creates the stiffness of solid linings with less weight. He
also laminates his end blocks and drills holes – all of which contribute to weight
loss. This creates strong, stable end blocks while removing almost an ounce of
mass. He says “Little things add up.”
Elements of Chasson’s design have been influenced by the work of many
other builders. Similar adjustable necks date from Stauffer guitars in the
mid-1800's to Mike Doolin's contemporary instruments. Rick Turner (maker of
Renaissance and other guitars) is probably most responsible for originating the
use of carbon fiber tubes to support the neck block.
Why, on this night, do we ponder why a Chasson dreadnought is different
from other dreadnoughts? Well, it
is made just slightly smaller than most conventional ones. Let’s measure: this guitar is 11 3/16th” at the
upper bout, 15 ½” at the widest (lower) bout; it has a soundhole diameter of 3
15/16th”. Its scale length is
long at nominally 25.5” The nut width is
1 11/16th and the string spacing at the bridge is 2 1/8th”. The total length is approximately 41 1/18”
and the body length is approximately 19 7/8”.
It is 3 ¾” deep on the side at the neck, and 4 7/16” deep at the bottom
side. Let’s compare this with standard dreadnoughts
that are 40 ¼” in total length, have a body length of 20”, an upper bout of
11.5”, a lower bout of 15 5/8”, a
soundhole diameter of 4”, and 3 15/16” deep on the side at the neck. A dreadnought is mostly thought of as a being
a flatpicking favorite but this Chasson version of a dreadnought is quite
capable of multi-tasking too.
Its tuners are gold-plated Schallers (made in Germany) with ebony
buttons; the headplate is polished Brazilian rosewood bearing an inlaid
stylized “C” at the top of its tapered cranium and the truss rod cover is a cats-eye
shape in Brazilian that’s held in place by twin, proud, brown chrome plated
Phillips head screws. The Cocobolo
fingerboard is awash with color and grain variation and inlaid with 6 mother of
pearl dots in 5 positions, the 12th fret hosting two pearl inlays
that are positioned at the center of the board, unlike the double dot distance
on traditional brands. The fingerboard
is cantilevered, as you know, allowing the top to vibrate its little tushie
off. The bridge is carved of Brazilian
and is bestowed a wide bone saddle – the perfect material with which to
transmit and intensify string dynamics into the body. Its bridge plate is Indian Rosewood. Echoing
the cats-eye truss rod motif, there is a similarly shaped port on the upper
bass side which allows a player to hear its melodious response first, long
before the audience catches wind of it.
The
sound of this instrument is, at once, sweet and clear, coherent and
expressive. It is the sound that players have yearned for ever
since our primordial ancestors stretched a strand of deer intestine across a
hollowed out armadillo and then played lengthy one-string improvisational melodies
until the sun came up. If your musical
tastes and inclinations are just a little more sophisticated than our
Cro-Magnon cousins, this guitar will give you comfort that it may well be the
last Brazilian rosewood dreadnought you may ever need to own.