What!?! A New Larrivee in REDWOOD??

[B0WIE]

I had to look at the title and date of this video to make sure I wasn't imagining things. Larrivee has a new redwood model!

I'm a huge fan of redwood as a top wood. It's similar to spruce, but offers advantages for fingerstyle. It's more overtone rich in the midrange and highs, giving it a very vocal midrange quality and sparky high frequency response. The bass is there, but very controlled and dry (which I love because spruce can often sound tubby and boomy). In fact, many of its physical traits are considered acoustically superior to spruce. Builders that tend to voice their guitars for articulation and clarity tend to make the best of redwood and, for that reason, I'm excited to see a redwood Larrivee.

[Queequeg]

Very nice.
If I was in a guitar acquisition frame of mind, I would be giving this serious consideration.

[StringPicker6]

I got my 00-40r moon wood from tune-up guitars.  It was a great experience with excellent communication. They seem to get a lot of special builds in their inventory. Highly recommend that dealer.

[mike in lytle]

I had to look at the title and date of this video to make sure I wasn't imagining things. Larrivee has a new redwood model!

https://guitartex.com/larrivee-instruments/
Scroll down a bit and see the L-03 redwood Guitar Tex had last December. There are 24 detailed photos. I never saw the guitar in person. I called this morning to ask about some other things and Mark (owner) said it not only sounded great, but "you could get lost in the top". Dang.

[guitarman001]

It's almost everything I want... Different top, an OO.... But I've a bazillion mahogany guitars and I'm actually really enjoying my moon spruce p-03r (and I'm a hog guy!)

Looks great....

[B0WIE]

It's almost everything I want... Different top, an OO.... But I've a bazillion mahogany guitars and I'm actually really enjoying my moon spruce p-03r (and I'm a hog guy!)

Looks great....

I won't try to sell you on redwood or anything but I will mention that, when you change the top wood, the back becomes irrelevant in relation to other guitars you have. The back makes a small difference compared to the top wood so it's not going to sound redundant just because it uses mahogany and you have guitars with mahogany.

Makers that are really good with redwood will often use mahogany and other clearer sounding woods in conjunction so that the sound doesn't become too clouded and emphasizes the definition and sparkle of good redwood. I'd say a a redwood/mahogany guitar often sounds more like a sitka/rosewood in terms of balance and overtone content, but the behavior and nuance are different.

[BlueBowman]

That sure is a beautiful top! I've, unfortunately, not had much exposure to redwood. Only played a handful of brands with it, but one that sticks out in my mind was a high-end Breedlove redwood/walnut OM. It had exceptional clarity (a trait a highly value) and worked beautifully for fingerstyle playing.

Good on Larrivee!

[guitarman001]

Agree, the top is 90% of the sound. Well, looks like it's sold and I'm not surprised !