Jumbo Sunshade, Blogpost - Avalon L32, Open Mic

Jumbo Sunshade - Blogpost

Avalon L32 Acoustic Guitar - Open Mic

The 
        other night at an open mic i saw a guy that i've met maybe 3 times 
        before.  He's a decent guitar player (no matter what he says) and he's a 
        great singer.  How well do i know the guy?  Not well enough to 
        remember what kind of acoustic guitar he normally plays.I'm sitting 
        at another table but basically right next to him.  He tells me that 
        he bought this new guitar on the advice of a friend who said "it's 
        basically a Lowden copy".  It had a UST but no controls so i think 
        this might have been non-factory-installed.  Either way, it was 
        failing during his first song so they just pointed a Beta57 at him and 
        it sounded really good.
I don't come across enough Lowden guitars to know a "Lowden copy" 
        when i see one so i just tell him "yea, it looks great".
He wanted me to get up and play something with his guitar, to which is said "oh, 
        twist my arm"!  :)

        The Avalon L32 is a thing of beauty.  It's got a spruce top, rosewood back and sides, 
        wide neck with ebony fretboard, and a (probably Brazilian) rosewood  bridge.

        The saddle was split; that i remember - but for some reason i 
        don't recall if it was otherwise compensated.  I also didn't think 
        to check out the tuning gears, duh.
I believe there might be different 
        versions of the L32, but this is what the one i played looked like.

If you look closely you can see the 
        clear sheet of pickguard material.  My own personal opinion is that 
        this kindof guitar would look better either with a "real" pickguard or 
        with nothing at all.  That reflection just bugs me for some reason.
        A dreadnought is always my "first choice" and when i play a parlor/folk 
        guitar i usually like them to be small.  But this jumbo parlor was 
        a blast.

        The guitar played extremely well.  I loved the neck; 
        reminded me of my Epiphone but with lower action than i'm used to.  I think this guitar was setup for 
        fingerstyle.  I would've loved to hear this thing in a quiet room 
        with EXPs on it.  Speaking of which, this guy had it strung up with 
        - what else?...  Elixir .13s  [sigh]  Well at least they 
        were Nano and not Poly; yikes!

        Anyway, you definitely couldn't play any slide guitar on this thing the 
        way he had it setup.
I played Leroy Brown (LOL) and no, i'm not kidding!  
        :D

        I played a couple of Beatles tunes and i think Tom Petty.  Then i 
        played an original and really opened it up with the not-so-tasteful 
        shredding (this is exactly what the guitar's owner wanted me to do)!  
        I can now say that an Avalon guitar is really fun to goof around on; the neck heel 
        doesn't get 
        in the way at all.  I'm sure Avalon makes cutaway versions of this 
        thing.
This particular guitar was "either three or four years old", 
        but i swear you'd think it was just plucked off the wall at Huber & 
        Breeze [plug].  It's cool that people bring guitars like this to 
        the open mic nights (and let ME play them!!) but i always wonder if they 
        smell like smoke the next day.
If he told me how much he paid for it i don't remember, but it seems 
        like it would've been expensive ($2,000+?).  Whatever; you just 
        can't beat a huge comfy guitar!