006 - Ear Trumpets, An Underground Luthier, & A NEW Flight Case

Acoustic Tuesday presented by http://tonysacousticchallenge.com

Here is your weekly dose of guitar geekiness. These are Acoustic Guitar nuggets sifted from the sands of the internet for your knowledge and entertainment... and of course to propel the #acousticlife.  

A luthier you need to know about: Bozeman very often feels like the valley of luthiers, being that Gibson is right down the road and there are ample amounts of small bench luthiers in the area. One small bench luthier that lives in Belgrade (just outside of Bozeman) is Dan Roberts. Dan is a master craftsman who started his career at Flatiron/Gibson, then moved to Santa Cruz Guitar company, and now has his own shop where he does some truly outstanding custom work. Dan draws his inspiration from the tradition set forth by the bigger manufacturers (read Martin and Gibson), but he enjoys making tweaks to it and loves the small shop environment for that very reason. Check out this video done a while back, which will give you Dan's thoughts on building and his philosophy behind custom guitars. #Guitargeek Alert!!! There are some beautiful shots of his shop in this video. 

Daniel Roberts Shop Video: https://vimeo.com/59663806
Daniel Roberts Stringworks Website: http://www.danielrobertsstringworks.com/

Guitar Gadget that has my curiosity sufficiently fueled: Flying with a guitar is no doubt a stress filled task that has us #guitargeeks pressed up against the windows of an airplane wondering if we will see our guitar case launched across the tarmac to an uncomfortable concrete resting place. Flight cases to the rescue!!! But wait... Flight cases can be very specific and often are custom built to an instrument's exact specs. So this means one case per guitar, but hold that thought for just one moment... enter Visesnut cases. These cases offer an internal strapping apparatus that allows one case to be used for similarly sized guitars... this means one flight case can handle more than one guitar. Flying with an instrument may have now gotten just one step easier. 

Visesnut Case Website: http://www.visesnutcase.com/
Visesnut dem0 video: https://youtu.be/xfjA4YX-gFg
Buy from Elderly: https://www.elderly.com/catalogsearch/result/?cat=0&q=visesnut

What I'm currently listening to: Currently I am stuck on Jeffrey Foucalt's newest release, Salt As Wolves. The tones on this album are fantastic, and I must say I may have broke an acoustic rule here as this album features some electric guitar, but hear me out... Salt As Wolves has the right amount of space, tasty guitar fills, stellar songwriting, and the type of songs that have you enthralled in their story. Jeffrey's vocals are whiskey smooth and his guitar work and tone fit each song to a tee. The stand out track for me is "Slow Talker," in fact check out the video link to see Jeffrey play with a past Acoustic Tuesday featured artist. 

Slow Talker w/ Special Guest: https://youtu.be/dpyG6rhQ0ow
Salt As Wolves Album: http://amzn.to/2x6emVX

A must hear microphone: I have seen multiple live acoustic shows in various venues, I have watched many youtube videos of my favorite acoustic artists and they all seem to have something in common... the microphone. An elegant, almost industrial looking microphone that sounds amazing. Ear Trumpet Labs offers some seriously beautiful looking and sounding microphones for acoustic instrumentation. In fact by the looks of it they are taking acoustic music by storm. Check out their site to lay your eyes on these beauties and check out the different models that they offer.  

Ear Trumpet Site: http://www.eartrumpetlabs.com/
Ear Trumpet Mics in action: https://youtu.be/SU30eXcwr38

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