October 27th, 2009 | 
Author: Ditson Grand Auditorium
I’m taking liberty with this name as no such instrument was included in the line C.F. Martin Co. built for the Oliver Ditson Music Co. It is what I imagine would have fit. It came about because of my daughter-in-law. I built my first ditson grand concert acoustic guitar and was expecting her to love it—it’s small and light and responds well to a light playing style. Well, she preferred the fuller sound of my bigger guitars. Not to be disuaded, I set out to scale up the beautiful grand concert to a larger size. And, to a certain large degree, I think I succeeded. The grand auditorium has similar, graceful lines and the narrow upper bout is comfortable for the player. The challenge for this rather long body was to get the bridge down low enough past the waist to efficiently couple the strings energy to it. I wanted to keep the short scale length for better responsivenss. So, I stuck with the 12th fret to the body neck joint. The bridge still is considerably higher on the top plate proportianally when compared to the grand concert, but it works. I figured I could always offer a cutaway to someone who plays a lot in the uppe register to compensate for the 12th fret joint.
The tone of this guitar is what I expected and wanted—richer and fuller than the grand concert . Nice bass response, but good balance all the way over to sparkling trebles. This is an all around good choice to suit many playing styles.
Scale length—25”
Lower bout width—15.5”
Slotted peghead
Bellied pyramid bridge
Be sure to check out all my custom acoustic guitars!
Posted in Acoustic Guitar Resources