Dale Fairbanks has been fascinated with the guitars of the 20s and 30s for decades, and his builds are steeped in the traditions that bring those tones to life in modern instruments.
This is a Fairbanks F-35, sunburst with a firestripe pickguard, a Madagascar rosewood bridge and fingerboard, and, dare I say, may well be the best slope shouldered dread I’ve been lucky enough to get my hands on.
Fairbanks says: “Developed using Paul Geremia’s 1939 J-35 as a template, the Fairbanks F-35 is as versatile a guitar you will ever play, equally suited for solo fingerstyle and old-timey music or hard-driving flatpicking. The original examples, built during the 1930’s and early 1940’s, employed various top bracing configurations: two tone bar, scalloped or unscalloped, and 3 tone bar, scalloped or unscalloped. They’ve all come through my shop at one point or another and the very best, the serious bone crushers, have all had three unscalloped tone bars and a relatively thin (~.100″) top. These are what I strive to emulate with the Fairbanks F-35. Strong mids are combined with an incredible low register and fat trebles, which are helped along by the tall top bracing. If you’re looking for a dry, booming guitar that sounds older than you and takes no prisoners, you just can’t go wrong.”
Here is a nice demo from The North American Guitar:
Condition: New; Top: Adirondack spruce; Back and sides: Honduras mahogany; Neck: Mahogany, soft vintage V; Nut: 1 3/4; Width: 16 1/4; Depth: 4 13/16; Scale: 24.75; Binding: Ivoroid; Purfling: b/w/b; Rosette: ivoroid; Orientation: Lefthanded (of course)
