Art et Lutherie - Roadhouse Havana Brown Q-Discrete

Art & Lutherie Roadhouse Havana Brown Q-Discrete - the chestnut tint of its semi-gloss finish announces a Canadian lutherie where the compact Parlor body concentrates projection on a reduced surface, without suffocating the lower midrange.

The solid cedar top opens up with an immediate organic warmth, more precocious than spruce under fingerpicking. The Canadian wild cherry back and sides add a woody grain halfway between mahogany and maple - neither dry nor muffled. The rosewood fingerboard and bridge add inertia to the attack: the note holds, the sustain doesn't fade until it's said something. The 630.936 mm Silver Leaf maple neck places the 18 frets at a distance that favours both open chords and melodic playing in the upper position. The 406.4 mm fingerboard radius flattens the steel string slightly - clean bending, controlled vibrato. The 43.688 mm Graphtech saddle frees the strings in the right spacing, with no lateral pinching, and the 16:1 ratio tuning machines hold the tuning under temperature variation.

The Q-Discrete system - with EPM sensor and integrated preamp - works in the background: volume and tone under control, with no parasitic coloration of the acoustic signal. The .012 set of strings gives a biting feel without betraying the natural body of the cedar. This is a guitar for travelling as much as for live performance, made for acoustic folk, blues Parlor and any context where an instrument needs to sound real, amplified or not.