Our new arrivals are the auditorium and orchestra models, the largest of the small guitars, built for clarity and percussion.
The auditorium sized guitar has tremendous volume, yet retains much of the tone and clarity of its smaller siblings the concert and grand concert. The orchestra model was originally developed about 1930 for newly out-of-work banjo accompanists suffering from the American public’s changing tastes; it is really a bigger sister to the tenor guitar. The orchestra was intended for use in noisy brass ensembles, so punch was paramount.
Orchestra and auditorium guitars actually have the same body size and thus offer similar playing positions and comfort factors. In large part, what makes them sound different is their scale length; the auditorium uses a 24.9” scale length, and the orchestra is a little longer at 25.4”. This, of course, means they feel different to play, because the longer scale length requires more string tension to be tuned to pitch. More tension means slightly more punch, but trades off just a tiny bit of the buttery sound and feel of the auditorium.
Read more about the origins of the orchestra model in this article by Eric Schoenberg and Robert Green.
Please contact me to get your new auditorium or orchestra model started.
