Brook Guitars Tamar 010

Hand-built August ? December 1999, customer specs. All solid wood construction. German spruce top, mahogany neck, rosewood bridge, ebony fingerboard, burr elm facing on headstock, flamed walnut back and sides (from a tree in a local park which was blown down in the October 1987 storms), herringbone binding. Small jumbo body (like a more curvy Martin 00), 14 fret neck, 650mm scale length. Mother of pearl dot markers and chrome Gotoh tuners. L.R.Baggs Dual Source pickup and remote control fitted. Hiscox Lite-flite case included in price.

Absolutely gorgeous and everything I could have dreamed of!! The Tamar tends to get used for a number of different applications. At home it is mostly used for finger-picked noodling and light flat-picking; then at church groups it is mostly strummed stuff (with or without amplification). I wanted a versatile guitar to be able to cope with these different ends of the playing scale ? something which the Tamar does brilliantly. After auditioning a range of sizes of guitar in different woods I decided to go for the smaller bodied Tamar in walnut. The smaller body is, of course, very suited to fingerstyle techniques while the walnut (broadly tonally somewhere between mahogany and rosewood) seems to allow the guitar to cope with more muscular styles.
Picked the sound is very smooth, balanced and well defined with a slightly dark edge, but without the sharp mid-range honk which marks a lot of smaller bodied guitars (and makes them very unpleasant when strummed hard). However, when the Tamar is strummed lightly it has a lovely, shimmery sound with a pleasant hi-fi treble end. Strum a little harder and a very controlled bass response comes out ? lovely. The guitar does not simply "cope" with all these styles but seems to actually excel at them.
As for the L.R. Baggs Dual Source pickup system, it is unobtrusive and very neutral sounding (I like the fact that you don't have to cut a huge hole in the side of the guitar for the controls). It was recommended by Johnny Markin, a pro guitar-player I know. He describes it as simply making you guitar sound like itself but louder. What more is there to say. There are no tone controls but, hey, I don't want to make my guitar to sound like an Ovation or a Takamine! If you must, you can always tweak the sound outboard.

Overall the guitar is beautifully made and set up. The walnut looks beautiful, but then again I chose it myself out of Brook's well stocked wood store. Despite being handmade the accuracy of the build is excellent. I've taken one mark off because there were a couple of tooling marks on a couple of the frets ? having said that its not enough to hinder playing but reviews are meant to be picky, aren't they. Inside is very neat and tidy with no excess glue blobs or sloppy kerfing. The varnish job on the guitar is great. Very thin and beautifully applied with no unsightly build-up around the neck joint but a mirror-perfect gloss finish.

Of course that remains to be seen. It is still very new but Brook's reputation and the build quality suggests that it should last as long as I do ? if not longer. All the hardware is top quality and the Gotohs are nice and solid with a smooth action and no backlash.

Great. They really fall over backwards to help and to get everything just right for you. When I ordered the guitar they were happy to let me visit the workshop, to try the various models on show there and to give advice on what woods, sizes etc would fit my requirements. Andy and Simon at Brook are real enthusiasts, craftsmen and guitar lovers. Once we had settled on the specs for my guitar Andy was happy to just chat guitars, life the universe and everything whilst showing me some of the experiments which they're working on at the moment. Again, they've got a great reputation for after-sales service and are really interested in what you think of their work.

This is a remarkable guitar. This is my first pro-level acoustic guitar and I've sold my old acoustic and a couple of other instruments to finance it. However, this guitar is an real investment ? not in financial terms but simply its the acoustic I intend to be playing for the rest of my life!!! The sound and quality of build easily compares to production guitars twice the price. There are so many great independent luthiers out there like the guys from Brook and Fylde (the only other guitars which I've played that compare at the price) that I sometimes wonder why more players don't go the hand-built route instead of buying Taylors, Martins et al. Basically, if you are in the market for a pro-level acoustic you have GOT to hunt out a Brook to try.
Trevor Raggatt