Jim Sullivan, luthier, the builder of Sullivan custom handmade guitars, was running the sound on Stage II of the Chet Atkins Appreciation Society (CAAS) Convention.  CAAS attracts some the the worlds top guitarists including such greats as Tommy Emanuel, Thom Bresh, Earl Klugh, Joscho Stephen, and Danielle Bazzini to name just a few.  This year CAAS paid tribute to two great fingerstyle guitar players who passed away during this past year, Buster B. Jones and Jerry Reed. Both of these guitar players were influenced greatly by  Chet Atkins and in turn influenced many other guitar players coming up in the ranks of the worlds top fingerstyle guitar players. The tributes were moving and many of this years contributing Guitarists played the music of Buster B. Jones and Jerry Reed in honor of their legacy.

Jim Sullivan had 3 special guitars on display at the convention as well as on the www.sullivanguitars.com website. A brief description of the guitars is listed below.

The first is SMSA-T – 026 which is a real eye catcher featuring wildly figured zebra wood back and sides with an Alaskan bearclaw sitka spruce top. Jim has inlaid a beautiful spalted maple rosette accented by an abalone center strip. Abalone accents are continued in the fretboard markers and headstock logo. Maintaining a zebra theme this guitar has a beautifully polished African ebony headstock laminate with ebony bindings, end wedge,  heel cap and bridge. It also has black and white purfling lines front and back on the body. Tusq bridge pins with abalone dots finish off this beautiful guitar. The guitar was not only an eye catcher but there were many comments on the playability,  quality of sound, responsiveness, projection and over all feel of the guitar. We plan to put an interview with Keith Beard from Alabama playing the guitar and commenting on his experience playing this one of a kind guitar. The guitar comes in a Golden Gate Deluxe case and is for sale at Sullivan Guitars for $4500.00.

Jim Sullivan also had two of his WM (working musician) models that were so popular with the players at the Chet Atkins Appreciation Societies event last summer. One gentleman who purchased  one of these guitars mad a special point to come by and let us know how well the guitar was working out for him and how much he enjoyed his experience with it this past year. The WM series of the SMSA shape has been built with the working musician in mind. The two models are the SMSA-WM – 023 and the SMSA-WM – 018.  A lot of the fancy trim has been kept simple with the emphasis being put on sound and playability. These guitars feature black walnut back and sides with a western red cedar top on (SMSA-WM 023) and a bearclaw sitka spruce top on (SMSA-WM – 018). Both guitars have traditional style bridges. Both have black and white purfling lines front and back. Both guitars have figured walnut rosettes. The necks are solid quarter sawn Honduran mahogany with a nicely figured walnut headstock laminate and heel cap. See more details on each guitar at Sullivan Guitars. These guitars sale for $3100.00 and are a great value for the discerning guitar player looking for a handmade guitar.

Currently under construction is an SMSA model with a beautiful back and side set of Palo Escrito. This guitar will have a signature S-style bridge, curly koa bindings accented with colored and mitered purfling lines and a spalted maple rosette with an abalone center and abalone purfling lines around the top. Gold open geared Gotoh vintage style tuners with scalloped buttons are planned for this guitar as well. Keep checking the Sullivan available guitars page to see more about this guitar as it gets closer to completion.

To reserve one of these fine guitars, contact Jim Sullivan at customerservice@sullivanguitars.com to get special at pre-dealer pricing.

Licktionary is an easy learning tool to help you take you guitar playing to the next level. We spoke with Denny Sarokin at the Chet Atkins Appreciation Society (CAAS) convention and learned about his intriguing acoustic guitar instructional DVD and workbook to help guitarists like yourself learn many styles of acoustic guitar playing to either play to improve their guitar playing skills or to help you learn new methods that you can use as a song writer. The is a great acoustic guitar instructional DVD to help you no matter what your skill level. Denny’s Licktionary is an interesting set of tools that you can jump into today tostart improving or learning to play the guitar.

You’ll find Licktionary added to the acoustic guitar instructional DVDs page on Acoustic Guitar Corner, your one stop shopping headquarters for acoustic guitar accessories, get it today!

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.

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.