2010s Stringphonic Selmer-Mac Copy Gypsy-Jazz Guitar

This one is a customer's guitar that was just in for a fret level/dress and setup. It's a top-notch instrument, though, and has a ton of cut, zing, snap, and that saucy little "burr" at the end of dug-in notes that players of Django-style gypsy-jazz just eat-up. 

Stringphonic is a Japanese company making clones of the old Selmer-Mac instruments and they do a great job. This thing is lightweight, raucous, and fun to play. It does feel a lot like "the old guys" but compared to something like a Park or similarly high-class build, it's more up-front, dry, and fundamental-sounding. If we were talking tenor banjos, this is more "Bacon '30s" while a Park is, say, more "Paramount '20s" -- if you get my drift? -- but you don't, probably! Oh well.

It's got the usual long 26 3/8" scale, a sort-of medium C/D neck shape, and wider nut than average for a Selmer-Mac copy. The long scale plus lighter, slightly-damped, Savarez copper-wound strings that are almost always on these are part of why the tone has that "saucy burr" to the end of the notes.

As I recall, this model features a solid top while the back and sides (as per tradition) are ply rosewood. The top is "arched" over curved bracing. My only "knocks" are nods to tradition that should be changed -- the zero fret is too tall vs. the other frets (so needed slotting like a normal nut) and the bridges are almost never compensated for the B-string on gypsy guitars. Builders -- why? Why? Archtop builders do it as well. Why? Whyyyyy?