Mike Vanden Guitars and Mandolins

VANDEN CADENZA
16" ARCHTOP GUITAR

Vanden Cadenza Review

Reprinted from Guitarist, October 2001

 

WE LIKED Superb craftsmanship, great pickup blend system and fine tones

WE DISLIKED That this level of quality must be reflected in its price

VANDEN CADENZA

PRICE: £6,000

ORIGIN: UK

TYPE: Hand-built, carved-top jazzer with pickup blend system

TOP: Solid book-matched Sitka spruce

BACK/SIDES: Solid carved back in flamed sycamore, solid flamed sycamore sides

MAX RIM DEPTH: 75mm

MAX BODY WIDTH: 404mm

NECK: Flamed sycamore with ebony heel cap

SCALE LENGTH: 632mm

FINGERBOARD:

Ebony, bound

NUT/WIDTH: Bone/44mm

BRIDGE/SPACING: Adjustable cello-style, in ebony; built-in Fishman transducer/56mm

FRETS: 20, wide oval

TUNERS: Gotoh, sealed

ELECTRICS: Mimesis Archtop Blend, mixable humbucking neck pickup and piezo bridge (Fishman) system. Controls for volume, tone and blend, discretely mounted under finger-rest with PCBs

WEIGHT kg/lbs: 2.25/5.25

OPTIONS: X-bracing instead of tone bars is a standard option, but as

a custom builder, any request will be considered. The supplied Calton handmade case adds £200

RANGE OPTIONS: Other Vanden models include the 15-inch Martin Taylor Artistry (£6,000) and the 17-inch L-5-style (£6,000)

LEFT-HANDERS: Yes, at no extra cost

FINISHES: Antique sunburst or natural

MJ Vanden

01967 402114

http://www.vanden.co.uk

Mike Vanden has a reputation as an archtop builder that few can match. Hundreds of hours’ toil and a lifetime of expertise go into an instrument like this

While archtop, jazz-style guitars occupy a tiny proportion of the world’s output, those who build them represent the highest possible talent pool. They include American geniuses Benedetto, D’Aquisto etc, the Custom Shop arms of Gibson and Guild, and indeed British makers like Andy Manson and the legendary Mike Vanden.

Building a solid-timbered archtop taxes the skills of the luthier to the extreme. The tops, backs and struts are hand graduated and tuned, with the smallest slivers of spruce or maple removed to create musical works of art. Finger-rests and bridges are often handmade and a certain level of ornamentation is generally expected. It’s a time-consuming business to craft these instruments and the people who make them are often compared to violin greats like Stradivari.

The archtop guitar dates back to Orville Gibson himself, the company’s latter-day genius Lloyd Loar, Epiphone, Charles Stromberg and, of course, the Daddy of them all, John D’Angelico. Technology has caught up with jazz, so miniaturised electrics now adorn many otherwise traditional instruments, including the Cadenza you see here.

Six grand may seem like a lot for a guitar, but when you consider that instruments from Mike Vanden’s American counterparts usually start at double that price, we’re looking at a veritable bargain.

Hewn from flamed sycamore, Sitka spruce and ebony, this Cadenza was built for David Linley’s Craft of the Luthier exhibition. Archtops tend to come in established sizes, usually based around the measurements that Gibson came up with back in the 1930s. Measured across its lower bout the Cadenza is one inch smaller than the classic Gibson L-5, at 16 inches (404mm if you prefer). Body depth at the rim is just 75mm, but this swells considerably as both top and back arch gently outward.

The carved top starts with a thick slab of spruce a little over half the eventual body’s width. This is split and opened out like a book, then centre-joined to create the classic ‘book-matched’ look. The woodwork is so immaculate that it’s almost impossible to see, but looking closely, the faintest line down the centre of the cellulose lacquered finish gives it away. Supporting the top are two individual tone bars, running in a shallow ‘A’ shape from each side of the neck joint, under each end of the bridge’s foot towards the lower rim. This is the classic archtop way, but Mike says his X-bracing system can also be specified.

Top and back are joined to the rims by some of the neatest kerfing we’ve seen, with no hint of glue seepage etc. Small mahogany braces are added to the rims, just for some extra rigidity in this all-important area. Vanden does employ CNC machinery to do the donkey work, but all final shaping and finishing is done by hand.

A wide and squareish heel, capped with a hefty chunk of ebony, brings the neck’s joint flush with the body, while the entire guitar is bound in dark, heavy-grained ivoroid and black five-ply for body and neck and three-ply along the fingerboard. Other ornamentation is sparse, with no fingerboard inlay (position dots are along the edge) and no tailpiece or bridge decoration. These, along with the simple, raised finger-rest, are all cut from ebony and finished to exacting standards.

At the other end, Mike Vanden has crowned his Cadenza with one of the most elegant pegheads we’ve seen. Obviously straight from the Gibson/Epiphone school of design, Mike’s abalone diamond star is simply beautiful. Add to that an abalone truss rod cover secured by a single gold screw, the tasteful Vanden logo and a set of glorious Gotoh tuners, and you’ve got a thing of sublime beauty. The brown sunburst finish, although perfectly flat and buffed to a soft lustre, does suffer the occasional imperfection due to colour overspray. Otherwise, we can honestly say the entire construction is flawless.

Action is set medium low. With almost standard neck dimensions and scale length (shallow ‘D’, with 44mm nut and 632mm scale), each note on the Cadenza’s perfectly fretted board chimes out clearly. It’s a lead and rhythm player’s guitar that’s easy on the touch but fights back just enough when you need it. You can see why Martin Taylor plays a Vanden.

SOUNDS: Acoustically this is a very open sounding guitar. Fitted with Elixir roundwounds it resonates freely and instantly sounds like a quality archtop. The mix of treble, middle and bass is different to a regular, flat-top acoustic. Where there’s a healthy dose of all sonic areas in, say, a Martin 000-style, in an archtop the bass is minimised and the treble not so prominent; instead, the middle tones take centre stage. Remember, these guitars were specifically designed to project over an orchestra, before amplification ever came on the scene. The bass would just have been lost and treble eradicated by drums and brass, so those lower to upper-mid areas were left to push through. It’s a warm tone with a bit of snarly cut, especially if you try those heavier-hit single-note runs of the Charlie Christian, Wes Montgomery or George Benson variety.

Mike Vanden designed the Mimesis pickup and preamp system, now marketed by Fishman as the Rare Earth. It features a magnetic soundhole pickup and optional internal mic ‘blended’ through the onboard preamp. Our Cadenza comes with the Archtop Blend version, as fitted to the Martin Taylor Artistry guitar and used by the great man himself. Neatly installed under the ebony finger-rest are hand-assembled circuit boards and discrete edge-wheels for volume, tone and ‘blend, while an elegant black humbucker (attached to the finger-rest) resides at the neck.

The adjustable bridge is fitted with a Fishman piezo transducer system which blends with the neck pickup. Our idea of a ‘jazz’ tone may be a big, fat, dull sound but many of today’s leading jazzers – Taylor and Benson included – prefer something jauntier.

On its own the neck pickup provides an array of sounds. With the tone wide open there’s an almost Strat-like liquidity; back it off and you get typical Joe Pass-like bubbly warmth. Mix in some piezo and the decades roll away. This is jazz for today, with all the articulation you could want. Most players would set it somewhere in the middle – too much piezo and it sounds a bit too Takamine; too little and you’re back to magnetic pickup only and not enough clarity in the notes.

Traditional players may wince at the whole idea, but in reality all the piezo system does is introduce the kind of edge that the original acoustic version would’ve possessed anyway. And you can always turn it off for those Eddie Lang moments. But if you want more definition, or want your archtop to do more than it already can, then this is an impressive breakthrough.

Verdict

Mike Vanden has a reputation as an archtop builder that few can match. His guitars are light in weight, full of resonance, beautiful to behold and packed with genuine jazz tone. His personal crusade on behalf of all live acoustic players that’s led to a great range of pickup/preamp systems makes him all the more special. But is six grand too much? No way. Hundreds of hours’ toil and a lifetime of expertise go into an instrument like this. The end product is a living, breathing being that will accompany you till the end of your days – it’s almost a bargain.

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