Ask five players what makes a great fingerstyle guitar and you will probably get five different answers. Even the term fingerstyle is a source of some confusion, since it refers to both a technique and a stylistic approach. Of course, the key characteristic of fingerstyle is the use of the picking fingers to play multiple musical lines at once, but contemporary fingerstylists also often use alternate tunings as well as extended techniques that range from banjo-inspired crosspicking and frailing to percussive slapping and tapping.

To support this approach, fingerstyle players tend to prefer responsive, well-balanced guitars that give them control over the relative volume of each string and make it easy to emphasize individual melodic lines. This is often achieved with a lighter build than what’s ideal for a guitar made for strumming. Given the need to cleanly access individual strings, most fingerstyle players also opt for a nut width of at least 1³/₄ inches, and some players find that more spacing than usual near the saddle facilitates their complex picking-hand work.

But beyond these generalizations in specs and tonal preferences lies a host of details that guitarists like to control, so many fingerstylists choose to work with individual builders to create a guitar that matches their personal needs. As a result, fingerstyle guitarists have driven much of the luthier boom of recent years, with many custom makers offering little else than guitars that are optimized for fingerstyle playing. Major manufacturers have also come a long way in addressing the sound and feel required for serious fingerstyle work, and in some cases have worked with well-known players to design signature models.

To try to understand what makes a great fingerstyle instrument—and how you might go about finding or designing your own perfect guitar—I talked to five respected fingerstyle guitarists and the guitar makers who built their instruments. Each of these players is closely associated with a particular instrument, and some of them have greatly influenced our concept of the perfect fingerstyle guitar. The cedar-topped small jumbo that guitarist Phil Keaggy and luthier Jim Olson collaborated on resulted in an instrument that has inspired many builders and that many consider to be the definitive contemporary fingerstyle guitar. Laurence Juber’s and Doyle Dykes’s efforts to design their own individual instruments (with C.F. Martin and Co. and Taylor Guitars respectively) resulted in commercially available signature models that have proved to be popular with many fingerstylists.

The musical styles of the fingerstylists we spoke to vary widely, from Rick Ruskin’s traditionally grounded technique on his Roy McAlister instruments to the contemporary percussive sounds and deep bass Don Ross produces on his Marc Beneteau guitars. All of these guitarists place a high value on the stage readiness of their instruments; they require workhorse guitars, tools that see daily use onstage and in the studio. The luthiers and designers of these guitars, on the other hand, had to come up with solutions to keep up with the complex needs of virtuoso players. As with the players, their approaches differ, and, ultimately, each offered advice on how to make sure that a guitar will keep up with a specific player.

Luthier Roy McAlister (left) and guitarist Rick Ruskin discuss a Ruskin signature model guitar.
Photo courtesy Roy McAlister.


Rick Ruskin plays Ain't Misbehavin on his McAlister guitar.

Rick Ruskin and Roy McAlister

00 12-fret/13-fret Nick Lucas–style

Rick Ruskin is an eclectic guitarist whose playing builds on a foundation of blues and ragtime but draws on pop elements from Motown to Steely Dan. His style combines precise right-hand techniques with string bends and lyrical phrasing to produce clearly defined melodies, bass lines, and inner moving voices, and he needs an instrument that is clear, articulate, and responsive.

Ruskin first connected with Roy McAlister in the mid-1990s when the luthier was working for the Santa Cruz Guitar Company and Ruskin was playing a Santa Cruz H 13. A few years later, after starting his own company, McAlister was working on a prototype, a 12-fret 00 inspired by Larson Brothers guitars, when Ruskin inquired about a Larson-style instrument. “I knew Rick and this guitar were meant for each other,” McAlister says. “Having watched Rick play, I was familiar with his approach and sensitivity and felt this prototype was going to be just what he was looking for.” Ruskin liked the prototype so much that he bought it and commissioned a 13-fret Nick Lucas–style guitar from McAlister as well. Ruskin says that both the original 00 and the 13-fret “respond the way I need them to. Furthermore, I didn’t have to wait for either of them to open up, because they both sounded ‘old’ from day one."

Ruskin’s style demands lightly braced instruments that respond well and create a full tone even when he uses the extra-light-gauge strings (.010–.048) he prefers. He’s a traditionalist, shunning cutaways, sideports, pickups, and other contemporary trappings. “I don’t even need an endpin,” he says. Ruskin also prefers tonewoods like mahogany or rosewood for the back and sides. For the top,” any flavor of spruce is fine. Other top woods need not apply.” Even so, he was content to rely on McAlister for specific wood choices, explaining, “My thinking was that he knew my sound better than I knew which materials he had available to achieve it.” Although the original 00 was made of Brazilian rosewood, McAlister chose Honduras mahogany for the 13-fret Lucas.

McAlister prefers to get to know a player’s style before building a custom instrument. “I could just build ‘my’ guitars and cater to clients who gravitate to them,” he says. “But it is much more enjoyable for me to build a guitar that adheres to the player rather than expecting the player to adapt to the guitar.” Ruskin warns against getting too caught up in conventional wisdom. “Do as much research as possible and then make up your own mind what you want and who you want to build it for you,” he says. “Everyone will have an opinion, but it’s going to be your guitar, not theirs.”

Don Ross rocks out on his Marc Beneteau baritone.
Photo credit: Christine Smith.


Don Ross plays his composition Michael, Michael, Michael on one of his Beneteau guitars.

Don Ross and Marc Beneteau

Baritone headbanger

Canadian fingerstyle guitarist Don Ross’s search for the perfect fingerstyle guitar led him to Marc Beneteau, a Canadian guitarist-turned-luthier who has been building guitars since 1974. Ross first encountered an example of Beneteau’s work in a guitar store, and he was simply attracted by the instrument’s appearance. “Despite playing the instrument all my life, I’m not really much of a guitar head,” Ross says. “Talk of tonewoods and bindings and scale lengths tend to make my brain glaze over. I had a hunch that Marc’s guitar would sound lovely, just from the way it looked.”

Ross and Beneteau began to collaborate on an instrument several years later, in 1997, when Ross was looking for a baritone guitar. “I had played a couple of electric baritones and really loved that range and the compositional possibilities it brought,” Ross says. The request took Beneteau by surprise. “I wasn’t sure what a baritone was until he explained it to me,” Beneteau says. “Together we came up with a scale length of 27 inches—on later instruments we went with 28 inches—and chose 1¹³/₁₆ inches at the nut to ensure he had enough room for the larger strings.” Ross also wanted a pinless bridge. “I detest bridge pins, since I use hundreds of tunings and therefore break a fair number of strings onstage,” he says. “With the ‘thread through’ design, I can change a string onstage in seconds rather than minutes.”

Ross’s ideal guitar must support his aggressive percussive techniques, funk bass lines, and wide range of expression as well as a vast array of alternate tunings. The demand Ross’s technique places on his instruments posed an initial challenge for Beneteau, who says, “I had seen Don play many times, so when it came time to build his first instrument I knew that it had to be very responsive, yet able to take a hard attack. But because of Don’s amazing percussive style, a crack appeared in the upper part of the top. I was horrified until he explained that all his previous guitars had suffered the same fate. On every instrument I have built for Don since, I glue thin cross patches [90 degrees to the top grain] in the areas of the upper bout where he tends to tap.” The reinforcement allows Beneteau to create a top that stands up to Ross’s style, without resorting to heavier braces, thicker tops, or other techniques that would compromise the instrument’s responsiveness.

Beneteau’s work with Ross has allowed him to continuously evolve the features on all his guitars, and he has added fanned frets, side soundports, Laskin bevels, and longer scale lengths even for standard-pitched instruments. The resulting increase in tension from the longer scale length supports Ross’s lowered alternate tunings without losing volume. “I like loud,” Ross says. “I’m really a rocker who happens to find the portability of an acoustic guitar very career-friendly.”

For guitarists searching for their own ideal instrument, Beneteau suggests that players listen to their builder’s advice. “Be open about your preferences regarding tonewoods and design details,” he says, “but remember that the builder has experience in these areas and may suggest other options.” Ross acknowledges the risk in having an instrument custom built but highly recommends the experience. “I always find playing a new custom instrument a bit like a walk through a strange forest, where you eventually get to know the lay of the land.”

Doyle Dykes teamed up with Taylor Guitars to design his ideal stage guitar.
Photo courtesy Taylor Guitars.


Doyle Dykes plays his signature model Taylor guitar.

Doyle Dykes and Taylor Guitars

Short-scale, maple-body hybrid

Doyle Dykes is a perpetual road warrior who requires an instrument that performs predictably onstage and responds to his stunning, hard-driving Chet Atkins–inspired technique and wide stylistic range. His collaboration with Taylor Guitars resulted in not only his perfect fingerstyle instrument, but a signature model that debuted in 2000 as a Taylor Limited Edition and was added to the Taylor line in 2001. To create the Doyle Dykes Signature Model (DDSM) with Bob Taylor, Dykes combined elements of other Taylor models—the body size and shape of the Grand Auditorium with the shallower depth of Taylor’s Grand Concert, for example—while adding a few unique twists. He settled on maple for the back and sides because, “Maple has a good dynamic range. You don’t get the sustain you get from other tonewoods, but that makes for a better stage guitar, because you don’t get feedback problems.” Dykes and Taylor refined the original design in 2004, switching to a shorter scale length (24⁷/₈ inches) to reduce the stress on Dykes’s hands from nonstop performing.

As a performer, Dykes considers the pickup to be as important as the guitar’s other features, so he worked with L.R. Baggs on the design of the company’s hexaphonic pickup. The hex pickup consists of six individual pickups, each in their own adjustable single-string saddle, which Dykes says “helps with the separation of the strings. When I play, I want the melody to be prevalent. With the hex pickup, the strings aren’t all fighting for the same signal. It allows it to sound like an ensemble instead of one guitar.”

In spite of their focus on stage utility, Taylor and Dykes included some features in the DDSM just for fun. “Doyle is a guitar lover,” Taylor says. “The cosmetic aspects of Doyle’s guitars are always fun because he’s into details. He has more ideas than I have ability to get guitars to the market.” These ideas include a new color (“brown sugar”), a Florentine cutaway (reminiscent of the Gibson L-5 Dykes sold to fund his first Taylor purchase), a white rose inlay, and “Chet-style” fretboard markers.

Taylor suggests that players searching for the perfect guitar start by analyzing their playing style and thinking about the tone they want. “Doyle plays hard and quick. Even when he flows softly, he has a firm attack and he needs a guitar that responds tonally at lightning speeds,” Taylor says. “This pointed to a maple Grand Auditorium with a thin body. Someone who wants a warmer, fuller tone for their style might gravitate to mahogany or rosewood.”

Laurence Juber likes the vintage tone of his Adirondack spruce top Martin signature model.
Photo credit: Teja Gerken.


Laurence Juber plays While My Guitar Gently Weeps on his signature model Martin OM.

Laurence Juber and Martin Guitars

Adirondack spruce OM with custom string spacing

Grammy award–winning guitarist Laurence Juber’s collaboration with Martin Guitars resulted in a series of instruments that he uses onstage and in the studio, and it also filled a void in Martin’s lineup of stock models. Juber—who got his start playing with Paul McCartney and Wings before building a remarkable career as a first-call studio musician and in-demand solo performer—has made a point of learning the ins and outs of guitar construction and tonewoods. By the time he contacted the venerable Martin Guitar Co. around 2002, Juber knew exactly what he wanted. “I had played a lot of vintage Martin OM’s from the early 1930s and was convinced that the OM was the perfect guitar for me,” Juber says. “I was starting to feel a little guilty that I didn’t have a Martin, but they weren’t really offering what I wanted in their catalog. So I called Dick Boak [director of Martin’s artist relations and publicity] and told him I wanted to order a custom-shop guitar.”

The guitar Juber envisioned had the tone of a vintage Martin OM—considered by many to be the Holy Grail of fingerstyle guitars—but with reduced string spacing at the bridge (2¹/₄ inches instead of the original 2⁵/₁₆ inches), a 2¹/₄-inch fingerboard width at the 12th fret (which would make it easier to play barre chords high on the neck), Martin’s modified-V neck shape, and a contemporary cutaway design that would provide better access to the upper frets. “I just took the original OM specs and modernized them a bit,” Juber says.

Juber also knew that he wanted an Adirondack spruce top, based on his experience with vintage OM’s. “I’ve learned a tremendous amount from selecting tops for Laurence’s guitars,” Boak says. “I felt that Adirondack spruce was overrated. I didn’t like the way it looked, and couldn’t imagine the sound would warrant the appearance. But I noticed very quickly a drastic difference in the tap tone.”

The resulting custom instrument was so impressive that Martin suggested a limited-edition signature model, and the model has now earned a continuing place in Martin’s lineup. Juber’s initial prototype and the subsequent limited edition had mahogany back and sides, and Martin has produced Indian and Brazilian rosewood versions. The model is currently available in Madagascar rosewood and mahogany, and Martin and Juber are experimenting with a maple version (as well as a 12-string variation). Juber finds value in each of the wood choices. “It’s all about what microphones like,” he says. “I’m recording a new CD right now, and I’m mostly using the mahogany OM; the microphone really seems to like it. But if I’m [performing acoustically], I’ll often play a rosewood guitar. There’s a little more projection, and it doesn’t bark like mahogany does when you play it hard. Of course that bark is great if you’re flatpicking.”

Both Juber and Boak stress the importance of doing your homework before starting to spec out your own perfect guitar. “Laurence knew exactly what he wanted,” Boak says. “He didn’t want to glitz it up; he just made the most practical, functional, tonal decisions he could make.” Juber also recommends thinking about how you plan to use your instrument when choosing tonewoods. “I often recommend people get Indian rosewood if they’re just going to sit in their room and play quietly for 20 minutes a day, because there’s something about Indian rosewood that gives you a nice chocolatey sound that’s very satisfying,” he says. “My problem is that after 20 minutes, I’ve had too much chocolate.”

Phil Keaggy with his trend-setting Jim Olson mini-jumbo.
Photo credit: Randi Auglin.


Phil Keaggy playing his original 1983 Jim Olson guitar.

Phil Keaggy and Jim Olson

Cedar top, small jumbo

Originally a virtuoso electric guitarist, Phil Keaggy’s acoustic style shifts between gentle fingerpicking, funky rhythms, explosive lead lines, and percussive techniques. A master improviser, he often uses a looper to build complex “jams” live onstage, using his instrument to create layers of sound ranging from bass lines to soaring solos—a style that requires him to produce a huge range of sounds from one instrument.

His collaboration with luthier Jim Olson began in 1983 when Olson—then a relatively new builder—approached Keaggy after a concert in Minnesota to show him an instrument the luthier had built. Keaggy liked the guitar and commissioned an instrument. Olson built him a guitar with a small-jumbo body shape and spruce top, but it turned out not to be what Keaggy was looking for. “I told him, ‘This is cool, but this is what I’m really looking for: a cedar top and a little narrower neck than this big one.’ It was not only wide, but thick as well,” says Keaggy, who was playing a cedar-topped Mark Whitebook guitar at the time. Keaggy says he prefers cedar because “when you play it gently, it resonates in a very warm way.”

Olson, however, was skeptical that cedar would make a good instrument or stand up to the rigors of the road. “I’d never made a cedar-topped guitar,” he says. “But I made one for Phil, and I also changed the bracing, partly because of the cedar, but partly because I was experimenting with bracing patterns at the time. I widened the X-brace and shifted it back away from the soundhole, so that the center of the X is almost in the midpoint of the top. It was a different bracing than I’d done before, but it was still an X-brace that Martin invented. I just moved things around.”

Keaggy was impressed with the guitar and used the new instrument on his widely acclaimed Beyond Nature album. “My Beyond Nature project was a fantastic experience,” Keaggy says, “and Jim Olson’s guitars had a lot to do with the outcome.” Encouraged by Keaggy’s positive reaction, Olson decided to stick with the new bracing and continued to build with cedar tops. “I decided since Phil liked this so much, I was going to make another one, and another one, and pretty soon it found its market,” Olson says. “It’s the same guitar that David Wilcox is playing, that Leo Kottke was playing, and that James Taylor has.”

Keaggy’s cedar-topped Olson remained one of his favorite acoustic instruments until he retired it—after more than 20 years on the road—when Olson presented him with a new instrument in 2004. The new instrument is essentially the same as the original, with the same dimensions, bracing, and woods, although Olson added some new cosmetic touches and custom inlay.

When it comes to finding or designing your own instrument, Keaggy suggests that the search for the perfect guitar is an individual journey. “Everyone needs to find what works for them, what fits their budget, what fits their hands, appeals to their ear, and inspires them to play,” he says. “Truly, any guitar that inspires is the right one.”

LINKS

Rick Ruskin
Don Ross
Doyle Dykes
Laurence Juber
Phil Keaggy

LUTHIERS

Roy McAlister
Marc Beneteau
Taylor Guitars
Martin Guitar Co.
Jim Olson