I now own the guitar Rick Fielding was talking about...it can be so loud it's embarrassing. Especially the bass which can sound like a Strat on overdrive if boosted too much. (Fortunately it's very good about staying in tune). It's not a standard Lowden model, we believe it to be one of the Japanese-made Lowden designs which were marketed under the name Flambeau--but this one had no maker markings at all. What I'm saying is that it's not very analogous to remarks about any of the custom Lowden designs that look like Lowdens--it's more like a Gibson J-50 than anything else (a resemblance that has given rise to a lot of unsubstantiated folklore), except it has a cedar top. Anyway FWIW here's how I amplify it, an easy task since it has so much natural volume.

• Standard Fishman piezo pickup, with a Fishman ProEQ preamp

OR

• direct into a Peavey E-Coustic 112 amp, using the built in pre-amp setting (no pro_EQ)

OR

• an SM57
  

I'm thinking that the Durham Lad maybe wasn't used to the mellower sound of a cedar top, which tends to give a sound that is round rather than cutting--lots of lovely mid. Most of the Lowden Lowdens I've tried had decent volume, not huge, but their greatest virtues were in other areas.
   
W-O