Average Reviews:
(More customer reviews)I've owned my BR-183 for at least four years. It is still the favorite performing instrument of my bandmates, despite its smaller size and more intimate tone-- it is preferred over, for example, a top-end Taylor Grand Symphony Koa and a handmade mid-70s Brazilian Rosewood LoPrinzi dreadnought.
The fit and finish on this instrument is top-flight. Out of the case, it had a surprisingly full tone, and over the years of intensive playing and performance, it has only improved in tone. Intonation is excellent up and down the neck. The fingerboard is a bit narrow but I have yet to feel cramped on it, though I'm used to 1-3/4" nut widths. Played fingerstyle it is an absolute joy. Without picks, it has a finger-sensitive quality-- one can hear the smallest changes of finger-angle, the shifts between soft fingers, callouses, and fingernails hitting the string. Up and down the neck, notes glimmer and then arrive with nuance and authority. Strummed, with the action extremely low, it does compress, but in a very pleasing way-- it seems designed to provide a sort of percussive rhythm-guitar quality. "Snapping" the strings gives a delightful pop to the notes and they retain their sonority rather than simply dying, as occurs with the very-young and very stolid Taylor GS. While the Taylor has begun to open up over the year of its life with me, the Blueridge seems more like a 20-year-old instrument.
If there is a complaint to make, it's with the lacquer, which is fairly thickly laid on-- one wonders what the sound would be like with a thinner finish. The detailing is almost gaudy-- the abalone is beautifully inlaid, but there's a lot of it!
This instrument's extraordinary virtues inveigled me into buying a "B-stock" BR-180, the top-of-the-line Blueridge Dreadnought, to keep at a retreat where I travel to write and think. I imagined it to be a sort of on-vacation workhorse, and was delighted to be corrected by its balance, volume, authority, and subtlety. Like the BR-183, it has become a favorite of mine, and of the band's-- requiring that I trek it back for performances regularly. Both these instruments have been fitted with Fishman undersaddle pickups that are led into a Fishman Aura for recording and performance, and the result is amplified sound almost exactly corresponding to the sound of the instruments in rehearsal in a living room-- quite an achievement.
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