Quote:
Originally Posted by Glennwillow
Older guitars built with BRW seem to be the bargains. In today's new guitar market, the upcharge for BRW seems to have gone to extremes.
- Glenn
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This has been my experience. The old guitars with that straight-grain quartersawn BRW seem to be magical while most of the newer ones I've played where the grain is wide and figured are not as good. Sure, part of that is the builder and the guitar but generally speaking I'd be hard pressed to pay a large upcharge for BRW on a new build.
Would I pay a premium for a BRW guitar that I played/heard in person? Maybe. I remember the first BRW guitar I played was at TME and was a used Froggy with very straight grained BRW back and sides that was positively sublime. Then I looked at the price tag - $12.5k - and very gently set it down and backed away slowly!
A year or so back I was having some work done on my 000-18GE by a local guitar tech (Pat DuBurrow) that has a ton of experience with Martin, Taylor and Collings guitars and asked him if he thought the newer, wide grain/figured BRW was worth the huge upcharges vs. the old straight grained BRW and his response was an immediate, flat, "No."
It's a moot point for me because I'm too cheap to pay much more than $3k for a guitar. But IF I was thinking of going for something with BRW I would most likely try to find something from the early '60s, like a birth-year 000-28 or something along that line. In the newer build guitars these days I've got hankering for a Lowden S50 in sinker/ABW.