Acoustic Guitars & Accessories

Recently Bryan Layne interviewed Jim Sullivan of Sullivan Guitars about his Guitar making business and his Acoustic Guitar Corner website where he sells guitar accessories for the discerning guitarist.  The interview should be published soon and we want to share some of it with you to help you get to know the background and some of the details about what makes a Sullivan Guitar a cut above traditionally constructed guitar.  Jim Sullivan has always approached his guitar building with the philosophy of building a superior instrument without compromise or mediocrity.  His guitars have sold so well that he has trouble keeping them available.  There is currently only one available on the Sullivan Guitars website and it won’t last long.   Check back soon to see excerpts from the Bryan Layne interview that I’m sure will be of interest to you.

Rising Stars from Chet Atkins Apreciation Society (CAAS)

This year at CASS we had the priviedge of having some young rising stars stop by and play some of our Sullivan Guitars and we made some videos that we have uploaded to You Tube. These young talents are going to be seen and heard a lot more in the future. Check out the new page on Sullivan Guitars at www.sullivanguitars.com/rstars.shtml We wanted to share with you a little of what we were able to expierence and help to promote them to help them in some small measure as way of saying thanks for sharing your talents with us.

We had such a good day one we decided to stay for day 2. Some of players that joined us today were Derek Freeman who came back again to give the guy from Kansas a lesson on the guitar. The guy from Kansas may be a hopeless cause however. We saw some of the young players. We captured some video of them so that you can see them in the future. Eddy Ruben from Georgia, a classical guitarist, stopped in and played one of the guitars for a little while.

Again today we received some very favorable comments and rave reviews on the playability and sound projection of the Sullivan Guitars. It looks like one of the two available guitars is probably going to sell and several inquiries were made about having guitars custome made. All in all, a great success.

Sullivan Guitars set up a room at the CAAS convention to display some of the available handmade guitars. There were some great guitar talents that came by and played some of the Sullivan handmade guitars and did a little jamming together. A well known guitarist that is a regular at the convention was Bobby Gibson, who played while Ray Espinoza and Joe Robinson, a young and rising guitar player from Australia, improvised and picked up on some of Bobby’s licks. Keep you eyes on Joe Robinson, he is a very talented guitar player, probably close to 20 years old and will be playing on the main stage with other Australian players at CAAS.

Rick Udel, a Brazilian nylon string guitar player, spent some time playing one of the WM walnut guitars with a 1 3/4 inch nut width and stated it felt very comfortable to him. Rick expressed an interest to come back and discuss some options on the guitars and stated he was in the market for a steel string guitar with a wider custom neck width.

Derek Freeman, another young guitar player who teaches guitar lessons also stopped by and played guitar for a while with Mark Barreres, a good friend who is helping to man the Sullivan Guitars room at CAAS. Larry Odham, one of the players on stage one, came by stage 2 where Jim Sullivan was setting the sound system up for the stage 2 shows and played one of the Sullivan Guitars and then returned later to the Sullivan Guitars room to spend some time playing several of the guitars.

Shaun Hopper, who has a CD out entitled “Shaun Hopper One Written” was gracious enough to play one of the Sullivan Guitars while Jim was checking the system on Stage 2. Shaun Hopper is another rising star to keep you eyes focused on.

All of the artists had great comments about the quality sound and playability of the Sullivan Guitars. Comments ranged from how well the guitars were setup in reference to things like comfortable sting spacing, great intonation, great action to good sound projection and sustain as well as frequency response. The Tennessee black walnut WM series guitars were a big hit and received great reviews by many of the players. Many expressed an interest to come back and play the guitars in the remaining days of the convention.

Time is rapidly approaching for the beginning of the CAAS Convention. Sullivan Handmade Guitars is busy putting the final touches together for supporting the CAAS Convention as they do each year providing sound and stage support to the convention. This year Sullivan Guitars will be promoting the launch of the Acoustic Guitar Corner website and displaying some of the handmade guitars at the convention as well. Stop by and play one of the available guitars and see for yourself what a quality handmade guitar feels and sounds like.

Drop a business card in the drawing to win a Shubb Deluxe Capo while your there. And don’t forget to visit www.acousticguitarcorner.com and take advantage of the CAAS Convention special discount being offered this month. Use the special discount promotion code “CAAS2008″ for 10% off all orders including all available guitars. We look forward to seeing you there at the 2008 CAAS convention.

Today Acoustic Guitar Corner officially announced it grand opening in connection with the Chet Atkins Appreciation Society (CAAS) Convention to be held July 9th through the 12th in Nashville at the Nashville Sheratan. In conjunction with the even and part of the grand opening Acoustic Guitar Corner is offering a 10 percent discount on all products including the available guitars. Acoustic Guitar Corner owner, Jim Sullivan, has hand picked the accessories and added only quality accessories in keeping with his philosophy of providing the best without compromise or mediocrity.

This year at CAAS I plan to have a table where I can show my guitars that are currently available and make people aware of the two websites. I have asked a good friend Mark Barerres to help me out at the table while I do my yearly stage managing and sound on Stage B. I plan to have several of my guitars at the convention so that some of the Guitarists can have the opportunity to play them and get familiar with Sullivan Custom Hand made Guitars. I look forward to CAAS each year for the music and the camaraderie.

I want to try something a little different this year though, I would like to take a video camera and video tape some short interviews with some of my favorite artists. On our websites we have been working to build a comprehensive directory of artists around the world linking to them and asking them to link back to us. One part of this is to help connect the community of fingerstyle acoustic guitarists and other acoustic Guitarists and have a central place to help promote Acoustic Guitar playing in America. We encourage all of you to link back to us as well and keep the promotion going.

I’m using a Blog technology to to help build the community and to link out to events like CAAS and my websites, by using a very handy plugin to word press called WP Affiliate Pro, I set it up so that it looks for different strings of words and then when it finds them it automatically makes them links to what they talk about. So for me I just type and don”t have to worry about the details of making links it done automatically. Feel free to explore the links, they will guide you around my sites as well as to WP Affiliate Pro to learn more about that technology.

My friend Paul Yandell recently reviewed several of my guitars and was gracious enough to write and let me post his most valuable opinion. In case your not familiar with Paul Yandell, he was Chet Atkins’ right hand man since 1975 and played with Chet for 25 years all over the world. Paul is a very accomplished fingerstyle guitar player in his own right and has several of his own CDs available on his website. We encourage you to check out Paul’s comment on the home page of the Sullivan Handmade Guitars website and  follow the link to the  Tribute to Paul Yandell page.

My focus is dedicated to building the acoustic guitar community and to support all styles of acoustic guitar players. I am also a strong supporter of the Chet Atkins Appreciation Society (CASS) Convention that is held each year in Nashville. I have recently added some links to guitarist around the world on my websites www.sullivanguitars.com and www.acousticguitarcorner.com. You can request to be added to our links page by following the instructions on Acoustic Guitar Directory or the Acoustic Directory Pages.  Our goal is to continue to build the rich heritage of acoustic guitar playing around the world.  Join us and continue to bring great music to the the world with acoustic guitars and acoustic guitar accessories.  Hopefully will see all of you at the CAAS Convention this year July 9 - 12.

A new video featuring a serie of still shot of the the making of a Sullivan custom handmade guitar was just posted on Youtube.com and can be view here as well. This video features a series of still shots showing some of the steps in the making of a guitar as well as some of the styles and options available in the finished custom handmade guitars from Sullivan Guitars.

Be sure to visit Sullivan Guitars and Acoustic Guitar Corner for all you discerning acoustic handmade guitar needs and acoustic guitar accessories. Currently we are featuring a closeout sale on acoustic guitar hard shell cases