Recent content by Jim Soloway

Adam's an interesting guy. He worked the NY jazz scene for years and made some fairly serious headway. Suddenly, he took a complete left turn, put down his archtop and started playing solo acoustic and his career just seemed to follow along. He was touring Europe over the last few months and...

Wow. He barely looks big enough to hold that guitar but he sure can play.

Adam Rafferty plays Jackson 5. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0x6GhwQjvo0

The 27" scale length came from the days when I was playing 7 string. Like all 7-string players, I was struggling with the tension, thickness and volume of the low string. Like most jazz players, I was tuned to a low A with the rest of the guitar in standard pitch. This made the problem...

Thanks for the entre. I will always take the opportunity to express my true love for the Lil' King. Very simply, it's the best sounding small amp I've ever played through. It's usually described as a Princeton Reverb clone, but it's really not....at least not the 1x12 version of the Lil'...

We've actually used a lot of different pickups, but we did use mostly humbuckers on our early guitars. The reason for that is a little long winded. In more conventional guitars, there's almost always a trade off between warmth and clarity. Most guitars that are built around warmth tend to...

It depends on who you ask and how you play. Some people don't notice it at all. Most people find it to be a bit of an extra stretch at the bottom of the fingerboard and they're able to adapt quickly. A few people find the stretch overwhelming but almost everybody likes the bit of extra space...

Thanks. To me that's probably the most exciting guitar we've built in a long time. After an incredible flurry of activity, we're not in the go slow stage whle the finish goes down, but I'm dying to hear what it sounds like and more than a little nervous about the balance issue. It's going to...

I'm a serial monogamist and have been for years. I always have a number 1, a guitar that I play almost exclusively for months at a time. Then I get bored and move on to another one and start all over again.

Thanks all for the nice welcome. "Old Coots" doesn't sound so bad (especially since I am one) and friendly sounds pretty good compared to what I've seen elsewhere.

Hi all, My name's Jim Soloway. I'm a Canadian living in Portland Oregon. I've been playing since 1962 (which means that I'm getting old). I play squeaky clean finger style solo guitar. I'm also the founder and owner of Soloway Guitars, a small builder of mostly semi-hollow/chambered...