Lowden F-34 koa/sitka

On December 31st, 2023 my wife and I were at a party. She was having fun. I was staring at a website. The reason I was staring at the site instead of having fun with friends is that I had visited the site earlier in the day.

It was “Bluedog Guitars”. This was a boutique guitar shop in Vancouver, Canada. The store was closing. Apparently they had posted that a while before I visited the site. But it was an “everything must go” sale. And by the time I visted there were only 3 or 4 guitars left out of the original stock of many fine guitars.

One of the guitars was a Lowden F-34 with Koa back and sides and a Sitka top. I really liked this guitar and the price was quite low compared to what these guitars go for. So, though I didn’t need another guitar, I bought the guitar.

I decided to share some pictures of it.

It’s a wonderfully sounding instrument. I like the feel of the neck and its unique sound. It’s great for finger-picking but it holds up fine with strumming.

I was over a friend’s house and we were playing bluegrass songs. Like Doc Watson’s version of “Shady Grove”. Shady Grove is a traditional Appalachian song. It’s covered by lots of artists. Its a simple song but, like a lot of bluegrass tunes, provides a means for a lot of improvisation.

I had brought my Mavis Mule resonator and the Lowden to my friend’s home. I wanted to let the folks i was visiting see both the Mule and the Lowden. They are cool guitars. I had the Mule tuned to Open-D and tried to play along a bit but eventually switched to the Lowden.

It’s been a couple days and I thought “I should really try the Lowden in Open G tuning and with a slide”. So anyway, this is a recording from me playing around with that.

This recording has nothing to do with “Shady Grove”. Other than I had been thinking of it earlier.