This arrived at my home a few days before Christmas, 2006.

The top is made of some special sitka spruce, dubbed ‘gray ghost’ by the good folks at Santa Cruz Guitar Company. The back and sides are some special old-growth mahogany with some really nice flaming.

It’s equipped with a D-Tar Wave-Length under saddle pickup, fitted by none other than Rick Turner himself (the “T” in D-Tar). It uses some neat electronic wizardry to get 18 volts from two AA batteries. The increased voltage means more headroom which means less UST quack.

I use this guitar for a lot of gigs with my band. We play a mixture of bluegrass and folk and this guitar fits that role extremely well.

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