For those who moved from dreads to smaller guitars

[DRodgers]

Why did you do it? I know a lot of folks have shoulder issues and such. But, what other reasons? In a culture where biggest and loudest is better, why did you go against the grain and say the smaller body is better for me. I am excited to see some of the insight and responses on this. I ask because I may be faced with this scenario in the near future if present trends continue.

[ako]

I switched because I found myself playing (and wanting to learn songs in) almost exclusively fingerstyle. I saw focusing on fingerstyle as having the biggest potential to increase my skill level significantly. The high string tension on my dread was not comfortable on the fingers for extended periods of fingerstyle, so I started to look around for smaller guitars. I also really enjoy the responsiveness of a nice small bodied, shorter scale guitar. Not to mention they're so much more comfortable than dreads!!

[DRodgers]

Originally Posted by ako

I switched because I found myself playing (and wanting to learn songs in) almost exclusively fingerstyle. I saw focusing on fingerstyle as having the biggest potential to increase my skill level significantly. The high string tension on my dread was not comfortable on the fingers for extended periods of fingerstyle, so I started to look around for smaller guitars. I also really enjoy the responsiveness of a nice small bodied, shorter scale guitar. Not to mention they're so much more comfortable than dreads!!

Yes, they are definitely more comfortable. For me, when I pick up the OM, it just feels right. The size, neck, playability, tone. I just instantly connect. I have never connected with a guitar like this. The guitar makes me take chances and gives me added confidence.

[Chicago Sandy]

I switched for no reason other than......it was there.

After getting my first steel-string guitar (a Yamaha FG-110, OM size) stolen in late 1979, I bought a Hoyer laminated curly maple solid-top dread. I knew bupkis about guitar shapes or tonewoods, and little about brands other than Yamaha or the then-unattainable Martin, Guild and Gibson. Heck, I even bought the thing at a shopping-mall ORGAN store! (Go ahead, I'll wait while you understandably and justifiably laugh till you fall off your chairs......okay, you've gotten up off the floor by now).

Anyway, I couldn't understand why even though my left hand had no trouble fretting the strings, my right arm and shoulder would ache after a long post-open-mic jam. Then when I put it on consignment and bought a Gibson LG-0 (I made out like a bandit when the Hoyer sold for more than I paid for it), my arm and shoulder pain disappeared and didn't recur even after a two-or-three-set gig (I was finally playing out by then). When I got the M-36 to complement (and eventually supplant) it, I continued pain-free. Ditto 18 years later when I got the Taylor 422R (Grand Concert); but when I got a 614ce the arm and shoulder pain came back. I discovered that it was much deeper-bodied at the point where my arm comes over the top than any of my shallower-bodied and smaller guitars.

Most of my playing is fingerstyle, but I do play dreads now, about a quarter of the time, mostly in the studio when I need to strum and strum hard. My arms are thinner now, though, and dreads are ergonomically comfier than they used to be. So are my Taylor GAs (414rce & 814ce) and even the GS-8. But for long sets, I find nothing beats an OM for comfort (and fingerpicking). And it's anatomically more correct for me, as my chest doesn't get in its way or vice versa. (That nipped-in waist accommodates "the girls" much more comfortably than does a dread).

[Jusca]

I went from a dread to a parlor size because I'm a short woman (5'1") and the dreads are too big. They cover up my whole torso and it's a very uncomfortable reach to get my arm around the body to play. I didn't know it at the time but it explained why I would never practice guitar when I first started playing with dreads. It wasn't until I found my mom's old 00-size guitar that I realized I needed another size guitar to be comfortable playing one.

Parlor and similar sized guitars are perfect for me and very comfortable.

[Glennwillow]

I bought a few OM/000 size guitars just so that I could experience them. They ARE comfortable. I still play bigger guitars, too. I like 'em all.

- Glenn

[guzzijeff]

Back in the day ('60s & '70s) dreads were what was available and what I learned on. It just seemed that steel strings were dreads!... period. I was never as comfortable playing that big thing, compared to my electrics. It wasn't until the '90s when I stopped in a local shop... and in the course of conversation with the owner, he pulled a Grand Auditorium bodied guitar off the wall & handed it to me. All of a sudden I was more comfortable... and then the Grand Concert finished the job! An acoustic that just felt right! Wow! They do the job & fit me better... and many offer way more versatility than a dread. Taylor Guitars refers to their GA body guitars as the Swiss Army Knife models... and for good reason: that body does many things well. Just my experience... yours may vary.

[DRodgers]

Originally Posted by Glennwillow

I bought a few OM/000 size guitars just so that I could experience them. They ARE comfortable. I still play bigger guitars, too. I like 'em all.

- Glenn

Glenn, I believe I like them all too. That can be a problem.

[Glennwillow]

Originally Posted by DRodgers

Glenn, I believe I like them all too. That can be a problem.

Yes, it can be. You end up with way too many really good guitars, like I have...

- Glenn

[FormerFoodie]

Comfort. Dreads were just too big and bulky for me. I had a hard time playing them for a long time. I loved the intimacy of smaller guitars.

I actually swung all the way over to the other spectrum. I moved to a true parlor than to an O-sized guitar. I've now settled on an OM. They seem to provide the best balance between comfort without sacrificing bass presence.

[EllaMom]

In addition to being more comfortable, the smaller guitars tend to be quieter, seems to me. Or, maybe just easier to play quieter. I never intend to perform or jam with others. I play purely for my own enjoyment, although one day I hope to be able to play quiet, soothing music for my hospice clients. Parlor and small body guitars seem well suited to that. Also, I practice outside when the weather is nice and don't want to disturb the neighbors. It's easy to play fingerstyle (my preference) quietly on my AP70.

[jjtrain]

While I may be a relative newcomer to guitars, I've picked up many guitars so I get a feel for all the different types out there, and I like the mid-sized guitars, mostly 000 and classical sizes, the best. My reasons for this...

1. I fell that mid-sized guitars have the best balance between base and treble sounds. While not quite as loud, 000 size guitars still pack a punch despite their size (especially when going for a solid top).

2. Being slightly smaller and lighter than a dreadnought or other concert sizes, 000 size guitars aren't as cumbersome. In fact, I can hold and play my Yamaha classical guitar standing up without a strap. My arm fits perfectly over the body and keeps it in place, while still allowing me to strum. In other words, it's less like operating a piece of equipment, and more like a fitted instrument that is easy to play and hold.

3. Oh yes, the slightly smaller body fits into more places than a full dreadnought or other large bodied guitar. How much difference that little bit of size makes is almost unimaginable, until you try to fit a 000 size and a dreadnought into the same space (passenger seat of car) and the difference becomes apparent.

4. For the smaller size, easier use, good tonal qualities, and slightly more adept at small spaces, there's nothing I lose by going a little smaller.

With that said, I do see the dreadnought's biggest advantage over smaller guitars is the incredible volume. Unfortunately, physics doesn't allow for a small bodied guitar to have a dreadnought volume without the aid of electronics, but how many of us play in a large band often anyway? I don't, and therefore I have no need for a dreadnought.

Again, I'm a newcomer to this hobby, passion, whatever, so my opinions are worth what you paid for them, but that's my reasoning and I'm sticking to it!

--James

[fceltia63]

For me its a balance of comfort and tone. I've only ever owned one dread that had the balanced tone of an OM body. I sold it many years ago (only guitar I regret selling). As was mentioned before, the majority of guitars built when I started playing were dreads so that's what I started on. But when I discovered the OM body size I fell in love with it!

[Wade Hampton]

For me it had nothing to do with size (I'm 5'10" with longer than average arms and long fingers) and everything to do with tone.

The first guitar I ever played that totally blew me away was a 1939 Martin 000-28. It was an astonishing guitar. The first guitar I ever bought and used onstage was a 1950's Harmony Triple O copy, which was a remarkably good-sounding guitar, though nowhere remotely within the 000-28's class.

A few years after that I got my first professional quality guitar, which was a rosewood Mossman dreadnought, and that's what I used onstage for years afterwards. But I kept the Harmony Triple O as my backup.

After I'd been married a few years I decided to look around for a pre-war 000-28, but the guitar I could have bought for $850 in the mid-70's had risen to ten or twelve grand by the mid-80's. So I talked Scott Baxendale, who then owned the Mossman brand name, into building a custom Triple O for me.

I ordered it as a herringbone 000-28, but as it came together Scott felt it was going to be such good guitar that, quite on his own, he decided to make a 000-42 out of it at no extra charge. Which was pretty amazing to me, but the guitar itself was and is superb.

Anyway, the reason I've always liked this body style is that it just has a great sound and a perfect tonal balance between the bass response, the midrange and the treble response. You can play a chord anywhere on the neck and have all the notes be equally audible; it's not bass-heavy like most square-shouldered dreadnoughts. What's more, you can walk out onstage and tell the person running the soundboard to run it flat, and it will sound great.

Translated to English, what that means is that Triple O's and OM's don't require turning down any of the bass in order to prevent feedback, the way that dreadnoughts usually do. Triple O's can be "run flat," meaning that all the EQ controls can be left in a flat line, with none of the frequencies boosted or turned down.

Some of that depends on the quirks of the room itself, of course, but Triple O's are much easier to mic than most dreads.

Anyway, from the late 80's onward that Baxendale Mossman 000-42 became my main stage guitar, and the Mossman dreadnought got less and less use until one day when I realized it hadn't been out of its case for a couple of years. So I sold it.

Back then Triple O's and other smaller guitar body styles were very uncommon when compared to the sheer number of dreadnoughts in use, and sometimes other performers at music festivals would make snide comments like "When are you going to get a REAL guitar?!?"

Then Eric Clapton played his famous MTV Unplugged concert playing a Martin 000-42 remarkably similar to the guitar I'd been gigging with for a few years, and overnight all those snotty comments CEASED.

I've never seen anything like it, the way Triple O's went from being perceived as being oddball, less-than-desirable folky guitars to highly desirable instruments, with one influential televised concert.

So, long story short, I've always been a fan of Triple O's and OM's for their tonal and musical qualities, not because I'm getting old and creaky and can't wrap myself around a dreadnought any longer. I would have bought that 1939 000-28 I mentioned if I'd had the money, and I was in my early twenties then.

By the way, I still can and do wrap myself around dreadnoughts: when I visited John Pearse's widow Linda in Germany four years ago, she took me up to John's guitar room and told me that she thought John would want me to have one of his guitars. I surprised myself by picking out a Gibson Advanced Jumbo, which is a terrific design. It's also both wider and deeper than a Martin dreadnought.

And of course I've got a McAlister acoustic baritone guitar, which is quite large and has a 28.3" scale, besides.

So for me my interest in Triple O's and OM's has always been based on their musical merits, (which are considerable,) not their size.

Hope that makes sense.


Wade Hampton Miller

[guit3090]

I have always had Dreads, but I have a bad neck and it is painful to play, would a 000 be more comfortable? What I really like sizewise are Taylor 214s, but I don't know anyone who makes a guitar that size, that I could afford.