Hand Made Hand Played - by Robert Shaw

The Art & Craft of Contemporary Guitars

Mervyn Davis comes by his craft naturally; both his father and grandfather were amateur violin makers and his father built a mandolin while imprisoned during the Second World War.

For more than 20 years, Davis has been perfecting a completely new approach to acoustic guitar design that he calls the SmoothTalker. The body shape of a SmoothTalker is similar to that of a banjo, but, instead of a skin head, it has a round, fan-braced Engelmann spruce top. A space between the top of the soundboard and the neck severs as a "breather", which facilitates the movement of air both outside and within the guitar.

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