A Conversation with Pierce Pettis (continued)

PM: I'm not familiar with those Irish guitars you play. What are they?

PP: They're called Lowdens. Gordon turned me onto them. They're made in County Down in Northern Ireland. They're made in a little factory, maybe ten people work there. And they're just absolutely exquisite instruments. The company was started by a fellow named George Lowden. The story I heard is that he went to the library one day--he was living in an apartment with a couple of buddies--and he came back from the library with a book on guitar building. He said, "I'm going to build a guitar." And they went, "George, you don't even play the guitar! What are you talking about?"

PM: [laughs]

PP: "Well, I'm going to build one." And then he did, and he just had a gift for building guitars. Then he taught his friends how to build them. And then that was the beginning of the company. And today, they've changed their name to Avalon, because what happened is, the Lowdens are wonderful guitars, but they're very, very expensive. I mean, they're handmade guitars, so not a whole lot of people can afford them. After going back and forth about should they make a more inexpensive guitar or should they just stick to the high end, it wound up that George is going to be building guitars himself, by himself, which will be called George Lowden. And those things will sell for anywhere from $10,000 to $20,000. Meanwhile, the Lowden Company has become Avalon. And what they've done is they've taken the basic design that was used with Lowden, and they've modified so that they make a handmade guitar, but sell it for the price of a Martin or a Taylor.

PM: Right.

PP: And that's what the Avalon is. I'm playing both. I'm playing a Lowden and an Avalon, and I'll tell you, they're pretty hard to tell apart. They're just both great guitars.

PM: Yeah, it was about the Avalon I was asking. Because I'm familiar with Lowden, but I didn't know that they were the same or sister companies.

PP: Yeah.

PM: Now, the Avalons have that remarkable low end that the Lowdens have?

PP: Absolutely, absolutely. You play these two guitars, and they are, for all practical purposes, Lowdens. The main difference is they went away from the slotted bridge to a regular peg bridge, simply because it is a lot less expensive to build a peg bridge than a slotted bridge. A slotted bridge means you have to add extra reinforcement inside just to keep the thing from flying off.

Also, Lowdens all came in really odd sizes. The Avalon has more standard sizes. And the reason that's important is that when they go to South America to buy their wood, and if Martin just ordered 2,000 guitar tops or something in a certain size, well, they're set up to cut that size and it's much less expensive to order in that size, whatever Martin and Taylor are ordering, than to add something to be made in a different size. That seems silly, but that's literally the kind of stuff they've done to get the price down on this guitar. But they're all handmade. I've watched them make them. In fact, the Lowden guitar had its final run last year, and I was over there when they were making the last Lowdens and the first of the Avalons. And they were making them side-by-side, and it was pretty much the same deal.

PM: Right.

PP: But one costs $8,000 and the other costs $2,000.

PM: Now, is the Lowden a good strumming guitar, or just a much better fingerstyle guitar? Do you like to strum, too, are you more exclusively a fingerstyle guy?

PP: I'm both. And one of the reasons Lowden is so great is because, especially with big guitars, you have a lot of a mid range thing that becomes a problem. They get real boomy.

PM: Right.

PP: But you never get that with a Lowden or an Avalon. They have really nice high end. In fact, those notes will hang a long time. You know what I'm talking about, it's almost like an electric guitar?

PM: Sure, yeah.

PP: But there's a real warm bottom to the things. And then the mid range--it has got a curve in the middle. And I don't know how they do that. It's something about the way they put in the bracing or something. But for whatever reason, they've gotten rid of that boominess, so what you're left with is just a real pristine high end and a real warm low end. And it makes for a very balanced sound. So they're great guitars for playing as hard as you want to, and it never gets boomy. And they're also great for miking in the studio, because they're just so well balanced. They're great guitars. On the other hand, the fingerboard is sort of a Martin type of fingerboard, which, frankly, for me took a little getting used to, because I'd always played Ovations and Gibsons. I was used to sort of a round neck.

PM: Right.

PP: And they're more of a flat neck. I told somebody it was like playing an aircraft carrier.

PM: [laughs]

PP: But once I got used to the neck, I think I play a lot better with these things than I ever did on Ovations.

PM: Oh, I'm hot to try an Avalon now.

PP: They're great. They're not paying me to say that. It's just a great guitar. There are a lot of good good guitars--have you ever played a Breedlove?

PM: Yeah, yeah.

PP: I love those things.

PM: Those are fine axes.

PP: And there's a guy in Atlanta building a guitar called an Everett, which I also think is real fine.   continue

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