{"id":23303,"date":"2025-01-05T21:16:13","date_gmt":"2025-01-05T21:16:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/guitarmadrid.com\/?p=23303"},"modified":"2025-01-12T14:47:44","modified_gmt":"2025-01-12T14:47:44","slug":"the-days-of-flagship-guitars-sporting-ostentatious-tech-are-long-gone-why-todays-guitars-are-performing-better-than-ever-not-that-youd-notice-from-lookin","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/guitarmadrid.com\/es\/2025\/01\/05\/the-days-of-flagship-guitars-sporting-ostentatious-tech-are-long-gone-why-todays-guitars-are-performing-better-than-ever-not-that-youd-notice-from-lookin\/","title":{"rendered":"\u201cThe days of flagship guitars sporting ostentatious tech are long gone\u201d: Why today\u2019s guitars are performing better than ever \u2013 not that you\u2019d notice from looking at them"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\"Furch<\/picture><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

Furch\u2019s Green Dc-SR SPE Master\u2019s Choice acoustic: Outwardly, it looks like a classic contemporary cutaway electro, but Furch acoustically tunes the tops of all its guitars using an undisclosed tech-led process and makes extensive use of\u00a0robotics for the most precise cutting tasks.(Image credit: Future)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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It\u2019s often been said that guitarists are resistant to change in guitar design. I think perhaps that\u2019s overstated, as our 40th Anniversary Reader Survey found that, on the whole, Guitarist<\/em> readers were fairly open to new advances in gear, with 38 per cent of respondents identifying most with the statement \u201cI love innovation in guitars, amps and effects,\u201d while the largest group \u2013 51 per cent \u2013 agreed with the statement \u201cNow and again an innovation grabs my imagination.\u201d<\/p>\n

Only 11 per cent of respondents said they had little or no interest in innovation in guitar gear.<\/p>\n

So much for the infamous conservatism of guitarists. The nearest it gets to being true is when it comes to styling. We may like to have all the performance advantages of modern guitar making, but we don\u2019t necessarily want it to show on the outside.<\/p>\n

By and large, we still like the body shape of a guitar to be iconic, any tech to be discreetly hidden away, and the finish to be one of a relatively small range of established colours.<\/p>\n

\"Furch<\/figure>\n

Furch uses composite materials and precision engineering in the CNR system that secures the necks of its guitars. (Image credit: Future \/ Olly Curtis)<\/p>\n

Yes, there are always outliers and players who like to be flamboyantly different, but I\u2019d bet the most popular guitar finish in the world is still tobacco sunburst and, if so, that says it all, really.<\/p>\n

Guitar designers are wise to this, of course, and the days of flagship guitars sporting ostentatious tech are long gone \u2013 Gibson\u2019s ill-fated dalliance with robot tuners a decade ago was the final nail in that utopian coffin.<\/p>\n

Guitar makers now tend to hide their innovations under the surface, so you can feel the improvements when you play but not be aware of them with the naked eye.<\/p>\n

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All the latest guitar news, interviews, lessons, reviews, deals and more, direct to your inbox!<\/p>\n<\/section>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

One has only to look how many high-end acoustic guitar makers now favour some kind of non-traditional neck joint for an example of this.<\/p>\n

Some of these, such as the CNR System employed by Czech guitar maker Furch, are so finely engineered \u2013 using high-precision metal fittings and composite materials \u2013 that the once derogatory term \u2018bolt-on neck\u2019 simply doesn\u2019t do justice to what is simply a more precise, adjustable and stable way to attach a guitar neck to the body than a traditional glued-in neck joint.<\/p>\n

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Introducing CNR System\u00ae Active – A Game Changer in Acoustic Guitar Neck Construction – YouTube\"Introducing<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Watch On<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

From the outside, the guitars look contemporary but still classic; inside, they\u2019re a clean break with much of the 19th century roots of modern acoustic making.<\/p>\n

Furch has perhaps taken some inspiration from Taylor in that respect. The forward-thinking California firm was one of the first really major acoustic makers to champion a laser-precise bolt-on system with its NT Neck, introduced over 20 years ago, and in more recent years has dispensed with the previously almost universal X-bracing system developed by Martin in 1843 in favour of the Andy Powers-designed V-Class bracing (and some variations for smaller guitars), which Taylor says enhances volume, sustain and even intonation higher up the neck.<\/p>\n

\"Taylor<\/figure>\n

(Image credit: Future \/ Phil Barker)<\/p>\n

But even at Martin, where the firm\u2019s long heritage underpins its huge cachet as a brand, the design team has been able to bring in seriously progressive elements to its Modern Deluxe range, such as composite bridge plates, Liquidmetal bridge pins, and highly evolved torrification for the soundboard, without offending purists simply by hiding it all under a beautiful, classic exterior with only the subtlest visual cues that the guitar is a next-gen hot-rod.<\/p>\n

So if you seek enhanced performance today, you can expect it to be invisible to the naked eye but to feel and hear it when you play. I had a similar experience recently, playing the Bare Knuckle PolyPaf humbucker set.<\/p>\n

The design brief was to take a classic vintage P.A.F. sound but make it more widely usable for a range of modern applications from hot blues to moderate-gain metal playing.<\/p>\n

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Adam ‘Nolly’ Getgood Introduces His Bare Knuckle Signature Humbucker Set: The PolyPaf – YouTube\"Adam<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Watch On<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

To achieve this, Tim Mills and producer\/engineer Adam \u2018Nolly\u2019 Getgood used traditional materials in innovative configurations including \u201ca custom wind offset of 42 AWG plain enamel wire, unoriented Alnico V rough-cast magnets and a unique combination of high carbon steel slugs under the wound strings\u201d. Having played a set at length in a PRS Modern Eagle II, I can confirm their performance is eye-opening.<\/p>\n

The classic sounds are there but without any wooliness, honk or quack, plus a more finely graduated response to touch sensitivity: dig in and you\u2019ll reliably find pinched harmonics exactly where you\u2019d want them to leap out; back off and they behave like almost like fat, plummy single coils. Overall, they just feel more poised and more accessibly expressive than many previous PAF-style humbuckers we\u2019ve tried.<\/p>\n

And that is what progress looks like in 2024. It looks traditional and sounds classic yet you can feel and hear refinements in all the ways a piece of gear performs. It\u2019s almost the opposite of the old clich\u00e9 \u2013 innovation, today, is very much velvet beneath the iron glove.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Jamie Dickson is Editor-in-Chief of Guitarist<\/em> magazine, Britain’s best-selling and longest-running monthly for guitar players. He started his career at the Daily Telegraph<\/em> in London, where his first assignment was interviewing blue-eyed soul legend Robert Palmer, going on to become a full-time author on music, writing for benchmark references such as 1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die<\/em> and Dorling Kindersley’s How To Play Guitar Step By Step<\/em>. He joined Guitarist<\/em> in 2011 and since then it has been his privilege to interview everyone from B.B. King to St. Vincent for Guitarist<\/em>‘s readers, while sharing insights into scores of historic guitars, from Rory Gallagher’s ’61 Strat to the first Martin D-28 ever made.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/section>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Furch\u2019s Green Dc-SR SPE Master\u2019s Choice acoustic: Outwardly, it looks like a classic contemporary cutaway electro, but Furch acoustically tunes the tops of all its guitars using an undisclosed tech-led process and makes extensive use of\u00a0robotics for the most precise cutting tasks.(Image credit: Future) It\u2019s often been said that guitarists are resistant to change in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":23304,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-23303","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-gear"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/guitarmadrid.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23303","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/guitarmadrid.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/guitarmadrid.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/guitarmadrid.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/guitarmadrid.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=23303"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/guitarmadrid.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23303\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":23555,"href":"https:\/\/guitarmadrid.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23303\/revisions\/23555"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/guitarmadrid.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/23304"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/guitarmadrid.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23303"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/guitarmadrid.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=23303"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/guitarmadrid.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=23303"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}