The New Takamine Bluegrass Guitar

In January of 2006, at the winter NAMM show in Anaheim, California, Mike Markure and Brad had a meeting regarding a new Takamine "bluegrass model" acoustic guitar design. Brad said, "Mike is a real bluegrass loving kind of guy. His 'holy grail' guitars are a vintage D-28 and a vintage D-18 Martins that he has in his closet. So he knows what tone is all about. He is the one that designed the Nashville model by copying my Merrill from the movie soundtrack, so I thought that maybe these guys would really go to the wall to design a new bluegrass model guitar. I had said some things about it to them, so when Dan Miller and I were at the NAMM show, they said, 'Let's talk about it. Let's design it.' After we met and talked about design features I sent my Merrill to Japan and they copied the neck profile, the bracing, and the tone values of the guitar. I got the prototype from them in September and was totally blown away. They really did a good job. I recorded it beside my Merrill and it sounds identical. I loved it so much that I used it on eight of the songs on the new Tim McGraw tribute record that I produced for CMH Records."

Although Takamine Guitars have not been known as popular bluegrass instruments in the past, they entered the bluegrass market in a big way at the NAMM show in January 2007 with the introduction of the new EF340/BG (mahogany) and EF360/BG (rosewood) Dreadnaught models that Brad helped design. From the cosmetics of the peghead and pickguard to the choice of tonewoods, neck profile, and bracing patterns, Brad advised Takamine on the design of this guitar. He has some advice about everything from peghead to endpin. Takamine listened closely and delivered exactly what Brad requested.