have much to do with how the
guitar sounds or plays.
The Recording King’s neck
is a pleasure to cradle and feels
friendly, fast, and familiar—
especially if you’ve ever had
the chance to play a postwar
Martin from the ’40s or ’50s.
It has a substantial D profile,
yet manages to feel compact
and easy to navigate. And like
any classic Martin D series,
it has a flatpicker-friendly 1
11/16" string spacing at the
nut that makes fast picking and
chording a breeze. Playbility
could arguably benefit from
slightly lower action, though the
medium action that we received the
guitar with is great for heavy-handed
strumming and deep blues bends.
Adirondack spruce is, in large part,
about dynamic range, and the RD-316
has acres of it. Strumming a simple D
chord, you can move from a nuanced,
whisper-soft arpeggio to a vigorous strumming onslaught without any perceptible
loss of harmonic detail. And the projection
and volume that you can summon from
the guitar is nothing short of impressive. Tonally speaking, the guitar at times
seems to inhabit an interesting middle
ground between the traditional warmth of
mahogany and the snap and projection of
rosewood, particularly when you’re strumming with a vengeance. More languid and
melodic picking tends to coax out the
mahogany flavor, however, and fingerstylists and country blues pickers will savor the
RD-316’s combination of dry, husky midrange honk, mahogany glow, and sustain.
Solid spruce top
Rosewood
bridge
Seagull Maritime
SWS Rosewood SG
Quebecois have a knack for putting a
unique twist on just about everything. The
province, its people, and culture manage
to be Canadian, French, American, and
English all at once—making it a place of
very unique style. So it goes when it comes
to building guitars, too. Seagull—a division of Godin Guitars in Quebec—has
always been very willing to impart this
design individuality on its guitars, too,
fusing forward-looking design elements
RATINGS
Pros: Very nice tonal balance. Singing midrange. Great
low-end growl. Nice craftsmanship and materials. Loud!
Seagull Maritime SWS Rosewood SG, $799 street, seagullguitars.com
with traditional materials. The Maritime
SWS (Solidwood Series) Rosewood SG
is no exception. Its most overt deviation
from tradition is the Seagull headstock—a
slender, tapering affair that yields straighter
pull across the nut that can result in greater
tuning stability and resonance. A more
subtle design variation can be seen in the
Maritime’s curvaceous body profile, which
uses a slope shoulder not unlike a Gibson
J- 45, and a waistline that’s shifted a little
further forward than the classic Martin
profile. It’s a beautifully balanced design
and a refreshing twist on a classic shape.
The Seagull is the only entirely satin-/
semi-gloss-finished guitar in our test group.
Interestingly, the semi-gloss finish almost
makes the Seagull feel more luxurious—
highlighting both the quality of materials and the flawless construction on the
exterior of the body. The solid spruce top’s
grain pattern is mostly tight, but there are
The midrange is beauti-
fully airy and chiming,
and the bottom end,
while not booming, is a
perfect, throaty comple-
ment to the sparking
midrange and trebles.
cool little grain patterns, too, and the solid
rosewood back and sides lend the feel of a
fine piece of furniture. Other stylish touches include a rosewood bridge, gold tuners,
and crème-colored, almost-Bakelite-textured
plastic tuning keys.
The 3-piece mahogany neck is shaped
in a variation on the classic, flat-ish, thin
cons: May not have enough low-end thump for some
flatpickers.
Tones
Value
