Beautiful 2021 Santa Cruz 1934 OMM Custom with a unique flavor that oozes a vintage vibe through the use of Old-Growth Honduras Mahogany and Old-Growth Adirondack Red Spruce, classic herringbone purling, scalloped/advanced X Adirondack bracing and vintage ivoroid rosette. Richard Hoover and this team know how to build high-end acoustics.
The Santa Cruz 1934 OMM Custom model came about when fans of the venerable 1934 D Model began requesting the same build in a smaller, OM body. The highest quality, old-growth tone woods, combined with SCGC’s relaxed assembly, produce an unrivaled vintage tone from its first notes, and it only gets better with age. Both master grade Honduras Mahogany and Adirondack from the 1930s, Adirondack bracing with hot hide glue, vintage tinted bindings and top… every detail of this guitar was specifically chosen to produce an old world, vintage sound in a pristine, new instrument.
One of the strongest explanations why these old growth tonewood sounds better is the crystallization process that has been going on for almost one hundred years. Crystallization is a chemical process within the wood veins. The nutrients flow through this sticky stuff called sap. When the tree dies, the circulation of the nutrients in the sap stream stops. Wood is then cut and dried. But drying only removes the water inside the tree, not the sap. Sap has a flexible, sticky cellular structure that absorbs energy. By getting older, the sap crystallizes due to a polymerization process. Crystallized sap is like glass and has little energy absorption. Hence, the string energy gets transferred almost free of restriction. The older the cut wood is longer the crystallization process was going on, the better the energy is transfer. That is why these old instruments sound awesome. And that is why Richard uses old-growth wood for the 1934 models. This wood comes from unexpected places, like an abandoned shipyard in New Orleans in 1900. They made ship interiors of beautiful Honduran Mahogany. Richard also bought old Chicagoan Whiskey bars to get more of this awesome wood. The other important reason why Richard used old-growth wood as much as possible is the deforestation problem worldwide. Richard and his team want to be part of the solution and by using old wood and not cutting a tree, Santa Cruz is part of the solution.
One thing is for sure: the grain on this Adirondack top is tight, really tight and straight lined, showing her pre-war age. From a tonal point of view, she is just awesome. Richard didn’t overstate, on the contrary! She comes in a very pretty Cowboy tooled leather case. It completes the guitar nicely without overstating. Current retail for this guitar is 14.975 Euro. Her condition is high-excellent!
SOLD
