Well, the sbarj ranch has two new arrivals right now, the colt that arrived this week and the Gurian guitar that will arrive next Tuesday or so.

Steve played my Gurian for a couple of hours while he was here and I told him -- as I tell everybody -- that I was trying to sell it. Well. It's a lovely guitar and it's on its way to Mountain Home, Idaho right now.

Bill put up some pics of the guitar. I can't find my copy of HTML for Dummies, and Bill is asleep, so can't turn this into a blue clicky thing, but the photos are here:

http://www.picturetrail.com/gallery/view?p=999&gid=822408&uid=511156

There's also a nice website about Gurian Guitars:

http://www.guitarre.com/gurian/

I thought I'd say a little about what is a Gurian guitar, because they're not terribly well known.

All Gurians were hand made in a small workshop in New Hampshire. Michael Gurian was the designer. He had his own philosophy about how he wanted his guitars to sound. Only about a thousand of them were made. A workshop fire closed him down eventually.

My Gurian (whoops, Steve's Gurian) is Number JR-C1562. The JR stands for "Jumbo Rosewood." It was handpicked, and possibly specially ordered, for a friend of the owners of the Guitar Shop in Washington DC. They said they asked for a lot of extra set-up work on it that helped account for its good sound.

A few years after Pam bought it, she offered it to me because she knew I loved it and she was ready to sell it. I sold the Gurian I already had, and bought this one.

The top is gorgeous. It's fine grained spruce (?) with lots of cross grain, sort of like curly maple, very resonant. The sound should get better and better as Steve plays it, I haven't played it nearly enough in the past 10 years.

The back is gorgeous too. Rosewood. What else do I need to say?

But it's really not eye candy. It's a unique guitar that sounds great. Not flashy, but real nice.

The label says "Gurian workshops, Earth, Third Planet from the Sun." I remember a Gurian poster with a photo of the entire workshop staff, including Gurian's wife and kids, and I seem to remember some chickens and a goat or two in the picture. The folks in the photo were wearing a nice collection of musical instruments, and as far as you could see, absolutely nothing else.

I don't now what that says about Michael Gurian, but it does give you the picture that maybe both he and his guitars were a bit unconventional....

I heard that Gurian was not interested in building guitars with a heavy, booming bass. He was more interested in a good balance across the entire range: bass, midrange and treble. The Jumbos are a bit deeper front to back than a lot of guitars. The neck is a bit narrow and has a deep curve underneath.

I also heard that part of his philosophy, was to try to build a steel string guitar that sounded good with classical music. May be fakelore, though.

I think it has a beautiful, bell-like sound. The high end rings, but it's not at all shrill. Hard to describe the sound of a guitar.

I'm going to be nervous until Steve and Jan have it safe in their home. Let's just hope he still likes it as well as he remembers....

Rita