Gadow Guitars Custom Hollow

2005 flamed maple sunburst top, rosewood neck, Seymour Duncan JB and Jazz humbuckers.

Beautifully versatile, distinct voice, shines with clean amp settings. Beautiful warmth and cut.

No flaws, perfectly bookmatched. Fantastic craftsmanship. Didn't require an after purchase setup.

Very solid neck joint, no give in the controls, pickups firmly seated.

Never contacted.

Just a fantastic guitar, particularly for someone into humbucking blues, classic rock or pop jazz. Pickups are a magnificent match for the body. Well balanced, sits light and tight on a strap or seated. I own several PRSs, Gibsons, Fenders some custom shop creations and several lower end guitars. And over the last 30 years, I've owned or played just about everything out there at one point. Whenever I need a warm clean or classic rock, I reach for the Gadow.

2005 Gadow Custom Hollow. Highly figured maple top with semi-hollow mahogany body and tear-drop sound hole, Seymour Duncan coil-tapped humbucker configuration allowing true single coil and humbucker tones, Maple neck with two way adjustable truss rod; 25 1/2 inch scale; 1 11/16 inch nut rosewood fingerboard with genuine bone nut; 12 inch radius, Ebony veneer applied to front and rosewood to the back of headstock to improve strength of headstock, Gotoh tuners, One piece TonePros wraparound bridge; TKL hardshell case. Everything you could possibly want in a guitar - they even have a piezo option for acoustic tones.

This guitar has a "wide sonic pallette" as they say. Being able to split the humbuckers is a key feature that I routinely use to provide me with an incredibly flexible tonal range. This is my workhorse guitar - the one I reach for when I can bring only one guitar. The guitar can go from a mellow 335 tone to a meaty LP vibe to the quack of an out-of-phase Strat to the honky tonk of a Tele with the pull of a knob.

My Custom Hollow was built flawlessly, the top perfectly bookmatched, and the neck looks like it's in the neck pocket so snug it doesn't need screws. The flamey maple top is so pretty you can't help but admire it. As far as the overall aesthetics of the guitar go, you either love the look of these Custom Hollows or you hate'em. The setup was perfect right out of the case, perfectly intonated.

Seems rugged; I've had this for three years now without any issues whatsoever. The hardware has held up remarkably well, but I tend to baby my guitars and not beat on them. I have used this guitar without backup many times, as it's the perfect guitar to bring when you're bringing only one.

I've only dealt with customer service once and it was the day I received the guitar; shot Gadow an email and Ryan himself responded within a couple of hours. I imagine if I had called I would have spoken with a human being, and not some automated answering machine.

I've been playing for 25 years; I'm a Strat guy at heart, with Teles in my back pocket, but I have to say these Gadows are quite a guitar. Extremely versatile, amazing tone, fantastic playability. I own or have owned Fender Custom Shop, Suhr & Sadowsky and Gadows are right up there with'em. If you get a chance try one and you'll see.

2005 Gadow Custom Hollow Guitar. Mine has a "Soule Burst" finish. Highly figured maple top with semi-hollow mahogany body and tear-drop sound hole, Seymour Duncan coil-tapped humbucker configuration allowing true single coil and humbucker tones, Maple neck with two way adjustable truss rod; 25 1/2 inch scale; 1 11/16 inch nut rosewood fingerboard with genuine bone nut; 12 inch radius, Ebony veneer applied to front and rosewood to the back of headstock to improve strength of headstock, Gotoh tuners, One piece TonePros wraparound bridge; TKL hardshell case. Everything you could possibly want in a guitar - they even have a piezo option for acoustic tones.

This guitar has a "wide sonic pallette" as they say. Being able to split the humbuckers is a key feature that I routinely use to provide me with an incredibly flexible tonal range. This is my workhorse guitar - the one I reach for when I can bring only one guitar. The guitar can go from a mellow 335 tone to a meaty LP vibe to the quack of an out-of-phase Strat to the honky tonk of a Tele with the pull of a knob. No hum at all, as the body cavity on mine is shielded. Extremely versatile guitar.

My Custom Hollow was built flawlessly, the top perfectly bookmatched, and the neck looks like it's in the neck pocket so snug it doesn't need screws. The flamey maple top is so pretty you can't help but admire it. As far as the overall aesthetics of the guitar go, you either love the look of these Custom Hollows or you hate'em. The setup was perfect right out of the case, perfectly intonated.

Seems rugged; I've had this for three years now without any issues whatsoever. The hardware has held up remarkably well, but I tend to baby my guitars and not beat on them. I have used this guitar without backup many times, as it's the perfect guitar to bring when you're bringing only one.

I've only dealt with customer service once and it was the day I received the guitar; shot Gadow an email and Ryan himself responded within a couple of hours. I imagine if I had called I would have spoken with a human being, and not some automated answering machine.

I've been playing for 25 years; I'm a Strat guy at heart, with Teles in my back pocket, but I have to say these Gadows are quite a guitar. Extremely versatile, amazing tone, fantastic playability. I own or have owned Fender Custom Shop, Suhr & Sadowsky and Gadows are right up there with'em. If you get a chance try one and you'll see.

Custom hollow with flamed maple top in a cherry red finish.

Fralin pickups

i run it straight up through my '69 twin reverb.

sounds like heaven.

Very versatile

fastest neck of all the guitars I own. Ryan at Gadow guitars dialed everything in for me after the first 6 months of playing and since then it's been spot on.

had the guitar since 2005, Not a single problem with it.

The whole staff at Gadow are really helpful.

one of the most versatile and sweet sounding guitars I've ever played.

2005 made in North Carolina, USA

This one is a Blood Orange Burst with Seymour Duncan pickups. Semi-hollow, unique, yet extremely comfortable body design. Nice fat neck with a rosewood fingerboard. 3 way selector switch for the 2 humbuckers. The pickups are coil tapped, and can be switched via the push/pull volume and tone controls. Mahogany body with beautiful flamed maple top. Gotoh tuners, TonePros wraparound bridge. TKL Hardshell case.

This guitar is super versatile. I play a variety of styles, and this guitar really gets an outstanding variety of tones. I play through a Tone King Meteor amp. The guitar is ultra quiet, even in single coil mode. The combination of this guitar and amp is blissful.

The workmanship on this guitar is absolutely flawless, down to every last detail.

I think it's amazing that you can call up and talk to Ryan (the owner) any time, and he is super friendly, knowledgable, and will basically bend over backwards to get you what you need. Lifetime warranty

I've been playing guitar for about 20 years now. I have owned pauls, strats, ibanez, yamaha, aria, a 335- and this is hands down the best guitar I have ever owned in every aspect. I am getting another one with a piezo set up. If it were stolen, I'd hunt down the fella who took it, beat him badly, and take it back. If it were lost, I'd check myself into an institution. I highly recommend playing one of these guitars.

Handmade by Ryan Gadow in 2004 (Durham, NC). Direct Custom Order.
22 Frets
Solid Figured Maple Top
Two Lindy Fralin Humbuckers which split for true single coil operation.
Guitar has piezo and midi option.
Mahogany Body and Birdseye Maple Neck w. Rosewood Board
Bolt-On Neck Construction
Locking Schaller Tuners
HSC

It's a pretty versatile guitar; can cover the gamut. I'm all over the place in terms of genres, but it's very comfortable with jazz-blues, blues, and rock.

Well, here's the story.

The guitar finally arrives at my door after waiting a substantial period of time. I open it up, and it looks beautiful. First problem, two of my specifications were totally ignored (blank fretboard and the addition of pickup covers). Those two things are not huge deals, but when you pay and wait for an instrument to be custom built to your specs, it should be done. So, I suck it up and start using it as my main guitar (babying it along the way). A little bit of time passes, and I notice something weird happens when I play, the neck joint has become very loose. So, I tighten it up and no big deal. Pretty soon it starts happening again and so on. I eventually do some work on it and the neck is fine. About a year or so into owning the guitar, the piezo just dies. It wasn't the battery, as I tried replacing it twice. Two weeks later, the magnetic output drops to "half power". So, I had an electronically unusable guitar for quite sometime. When I finally got the time to go to work on it, I gave the guys at Graphtech a call and they walked me through open-heart surgery, a successful one at that. It was wired very sloppily as well.

So, long story short, the guitar now plays and works like it should.

Physical neck joint issues, electronic issues, etc.
Everything else seems up to par...

Called a few times, left messages, no response.

In the beginning stages Paul and Ryan were very helpful though. Very nice people.

Great guitar, dissapointing workmanship.

Gadow Classic Hollow with Spalted Maple top finished in natural ultra violet polyester made in Durham, NC USA. South African Mahogany back (more figured than South American Mahogany.) Birds-eye bolt-on maple neck with maple fingerboard. 25 1/2" scale length with 12" radius. Small size fret on a beefier size neck. Ebony overlay on back of headstock for strenth and sustain. Chrome TonePro fixed bridge. Fralin special designed humbuckers with split coils activated by push-pull CTS control pots. Master volume and master tone control. 3-way pickup selector. TKL hardshell case is included.

This guitar sound incredible through any amp, particularly 15-40 watt tube amps. I'm using a Fender Prosonic most of the time, but also play through a 1964 Fender Bassman or a 57 Fender Deluxe. It goes from snappy bitting single coil twang to smoothe mellow semi-hollow full tones. My first reaction when I heard this model was that you can actually hear the hollow chamber coming through the pickups.

My guitar arrived in absolutely perfect playing condition. I set the action a little lower to suit my taste. The Spalted Maple top is some of the most amazing looking wood you can see and the top was laid out beautifully to accent the placement of the components on the guitar. Fit and finish on the guitar is some of the best I've seen. No complaints about the craftsmanship on the instrument.

I gig out with this guitar every weekend. I have been using it since September (6 months) and haven't used my 68 Tele Thinline, 59 Les Paul Reissue or 4 other instruments I was taking out. No belt buckle marks, even very few pick scratches which rub out with some MaGuiars polish. I use Dunlop Straplocks on all my guitars. It's been the only guitar I've been taking to gig with.

When you buy a Gadow Guitar you become a member of the Gadow Family. They know you and they know your guitar. Ryan calls up every new purchaser himself and welcomes you to the family. These guys have rewritten the book on Customer Service.

It's been a very long time, years, since I've been so pleased with purchasing a new guitar. I've owned about 70 and there's some I would love to have back, but this one will never be sold. The best way to describe it is, THIS IS A FUN GUITAR TO PLAY! When the sales rep asked me to look at a new guitar he was selling, my first reaction was, 'Oh, no, another expensive high end guitar', but the guitar sold itself to me. The sound immediately caught my ear, and then when I played it I was hooked. I really lood forward to playing every night and this guitar has a LOT to do with it.

This may be the last guitar I ever buy!... Unless I buy another Gadow.

I have a Custom Hollow with Piezos and I use it with a Roland VG88v2. This combination is the utimate of any tone you could possibly want, with the prettiest wood you ever saw, with the most comfortable axe you ever played!

What else could you ask for?

Perfect sound.

The Lindy Fralins played through a normal amp are far and away the best I have ever used. The semi-hollow adds just the right bite and warmth.

For any other sound the VG88 synth combined with the Graphtech Ghosts are quiet and smooth... and will many ANY kind of tone you need.

As a co-worker said: "This wood is so nice it looks fake".

The gloss, grain and depth are so good the guitar doesn't really look like wood at all-- more like something transparent with woodlike structure inside.

The neck is perfect, and the 1 3/4 width fits my thick fingers perfectly.

Hasn't broken yet. Don't see why it should.

All Gadows feature a headstock reinforced with ebony and rosewood. I don't plan to drop it to test this however...

I bought mine by talking directly with Gadow. I talked directly to Ryan and Chris several times. They talked me through the options and designed exactly the custom guitar that I wanted.

Buy one before others discover Gadow and the price goes up.

This Custom Hollow was built by Ryan at RR Gadow Guitars in August, 2003 at his shop in Durham, North Carolina. The top is book matched figured maple with mahogony sides and back. The two Fralin Humbuckers are coil tapped. The standard 3 position pickup switch is onboard.
The guitar also has the RMC Piezo pickup with the 13 pin connector in addition to the 1/4" standard out. It has one push/pull volume control which taps the neck pickup, one push/pull tone control which taps the bridge pickup and a blender pot for controlling the pickup/piezo mix. A small toggle controls the straight guitar sound with the 13 pin output. The positions are 1) guitar only; 2) guitar and 13 pin; 3) 13 pin only. Another small toggle allows you to sequentially cycle up or down thru the programmed sounds on the Roland unit. Because of an RMC limitation, the Piezo cannot be dedicated to a single in/out switch when wired to the 13 pin connection. Ryan is looking into a way around this. This added capability would make the Piezo even more desirable. The Piezo currently can be isolated with the blender pot but the switch would make it more manageable.

Since I haven't had an extended opportunity to work with the Roland gear yet, I'm excluding the use of any with this assessment. I did have a brief opportunity to play thru a GR-33 that Ryan had at his shop when I picked up the guitar. I will tell you that it was pretty wild having my new axe sound like a grand piano thru one amp and
then also hearing the awesome clarity and presence of the guitar itself thru another amp simultaneously. Anyway, in a nutshell, this guitar just wants to burn. What a sound. I've been at it for over 35 years and I haven't owned a guitar that has so much natural sustain, particularly on the high end. The notes just don't want to quit. Same settings on another one of the guitars at home, '75 Les Paul, '62 Strat re-issue with Fralins on it, no comparison. The Piezo adds a whole other dimension to this instrument. I strongly recommend
getting this option. My initial thoughts were that the Piezo would be very bright. Turns out it is just the opposite. It provides a very warm, clear sound to the guitar, distinctively different than the Fralins and for the time being, my favorite sound on the guitar. Currently I have been playing with the blender pot at 70% Piezo,
30% Fralins, altering the pickup switch as you would normally based on what you're up to. One of my favorites is turning the amp up louder than normal and then ringing in a couple of notes with the volume trick on a slow tune. You get those light feedback/overtones... man it's a beautiful thing

I asked Ryan to set it the action up extra low and he did just that. Actually I couldn't believe how low he got it. It was great playing like that, but what I found was that the Piezo did lose a bit of presence with the action that low. I did take it back and he raised it just a touch and the whole guitar just worked better. More sustain,
clearer sound. Ryan's real good that way. He's all about you having things your way, but he knew I would be back to get it dialed in the right way... The maple top is matched up real nice. When I went into the shop to start picking out the wood, I asked him which one was his favorite, and that's the one we went with. It's a bit of a cross between flame and figured. The look changes depending on how you hold it in the light. Awesome... I play with .011s, heavier than usual, and Ryan has re-worked the nut a bit as the G was getting hung up once in a while. All the components Dr. Gadow uses are of the best quality. Guitar is very quiet when moving from setting to setting.
When I came into look at the finish on the body before he put the guitar together, it wasn't just what I was looking for. It's hard to get that stuff right from just looking at the pictures. Again, this is no problem at Gadow Guitars. He stripped it and we started over, no charge to the customer. I was looking for an amber with just the slightest burst and I got just what I was looking for.

The axe is all about being played. No question about worthiness in this regard. As mentioned above, all components are the best. Even so, I always play a gig with a backup, even if I have just changed strings. You just never know when your going to break one. That said, I'm working on making the backup another Gadow. Strap lock system is factory installed so no worries there. Another one of the things that is really enjoyable about the guitar is the weight. Being a hollow body, it's much easier to strap it on for a couple of hours at a time. We all know how heavy a Les Paul gets...

Customer support is the best at Gadow Guitars. All my dealings with Gadow Guitars, during the build process and the rare occasion when it has gone in for a tweak have been nothing less than a good experience. The tweaks have come at no charge, even the battery he replaced a few weeks ago after almost a year. As I said above, Ryan is all about what the guy that's playing the guitar wants. He's not happy unless you are happy.

I have been playing for over 35 years. As mentioned above, I also own a '75 Les Paul, a '62 Strat re-issue and a Taylor 814ce. I have rarely picked up either of the electrics since purchasing the Gadow. No question I would get another. I am working on that now. The part I love most is the sound of the instrument, the warmth and sustain. I haven't found anything I hate about the guitar. I would like to have stereo 1/4" output and the piezo dedicated to a switch and have that co-exist with the Roland 13 pin currently onboard. It would make the pickup configurations more flexible. I spoke to Ryan about this recently and he said he would talk to RMC Piezo about it. Based on that, I'm sure I'll be playing it that way in the near future.

I would highly recommend purchasing one of Ryan's guitars. The quality is excellent, the sound on this custom hollow is in my view unmatched and they come at a very reasonable price for a custom built guitar. Tack on the way Gadow Guitar takes care of it's customers and you've got an unbeatable deal.

The guitar was the first Custom Hollow that Ryan ever created. The guitar has mahogany back and sides,with a Flame Maple body, and mathching headstock. The pick-ups on the guitar are Lindy Fralins with coil tapps. The volume and tone controls both have push-pull pots that operate the coil-tapping pick-ups. The neck of the guitar is maple with a Pau Ferro fretboard. The abolone dots on the neck are positioned in Ryan's signature staggered positioning. The dots are a perfect match for the inlayed Abolone strip that runs down the middle of the guitar's body. The guitar features an Abm Bridge, and Gotho Non-locking tuners, and Schaller Strap Locks. The guitar also came with Tweed Vintage styled Case.

I am a Gospel guitar player, and I've played many different guitars, but the Custom Hollow is by far the best sounding instrument that I've ever played. It's hollow body gives it a fat warm tone. The guitar is definitely a cross in sound between the best sounding strat, and the best sounding ES 335. I currently play the guitar through a Roland JC-120 amplifier, and a Boss DD-2 digital delay,Boss Compressor, Ibanez TS9(overdrive), and occassionally a Jim Dunlop 535 Wah Pedal. But the guitar needs no effects to sound great.

The quality of the instrument is flawless. The string height, and playability are also great.

I've now owned the guitar a little over a year. It has been played tremendously, at varying temperatures and altitudes, and I have yet to encounter any flaw.

All of my dealings with Ryan (RR Gadow Guitars/High Strung Guitar Repair) have been pleasant. I just wished my new work schedule allowed me to spend more time at his shop. Ryan takes care of all of his guitars that he sells.

I've been playing for the past 16 Years, and I've done both studio and professional work with the guitar, and I'm anxiously awaiting the time when I'll purchase my next RR Gadow Guitar (Custom F). I may even at some point have Ryan install a Piezo Bridge on my guitar.