LISTPRICE: $6,905.00
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Santa Cruz Guitar Company utilizes old school lutherie born from a genuine love of the guitar;  imagine a guy alone at a bench, painstakingly tuning a premium slab of Sitka Spruce. Their new Otis Taylor Signature Model is a nod to vintage instruments with a taste of the modern.

Santa Cruz based The OT on their H-13 model.  The Otis consists of all exotic woods:  Madagascar Rosewood back and sides, Italian Spruce Top, and Adirondack spruce bracing.  Like Gibson, they are one of the last guitar companies to employ the time-consuming Dovetail neck joint,  which,  to my ear, brings out more warm mids than a bolt on neck.

The Otis is the first Santa Cruz guitar with a compound radius fingerboard, (for easeir playing up the neck), and frets deleted after # 14.  The rest of the fret board is just a big, black blank with Otis Taylor’s initials near the end.  This is something I really dig.  Tenacious D is the only band allowed to play above the 12th fret on an acoustic guitar.  The OT doesn’t even give you the option of embarrassing yourself way up there.

The OT comes equipped with SCGC vintage style tuners.  The 18:1 ratio is finer than anything on the market in a vintage tuner; sculpted and sleek with a strong, elegant design,  these tuners work great and look good doing it.

The OT has a Nitro Cellulose Lacquer finish rather than the Poly finish most guitar builders use today.  I’m telling you, spraying plastic on a guitar won’t help wood resonate.  Nitro is the way to go though it is more prone to weather checking.  If you don’t dig weather checking on your guitar you are probably one of those people who buy guitars to look at rather than play.

The real question is how does an outstanding but somewhat obscure, blues banjo player get such a kick-ass guitar made in his honor?

Specs:

Body Length: 19.25″

Body Depth: 4 7/8″

Body Width: 14.6″

Overall Length: 39.5″

Number of Frets: 14

Frets Clear of the Body: 13

Custom Color