I'm seriously thinking of ordering a custom OM from John. From my research he seems like someone who understands the vintage Martin magic of the 30's OMs while keeping an open mind for improvements. Repair work at Gruhns surely helped
prior to opening his own shop. Anyone tried one?

Jaco, I don't know who might have a Greven over here, but on the APM Forum there are several who own John's guitars.
And John himself posts over there. I'll get ya a link after a bit.

Check around over here Jaco,

http://acousticplayermagazine.com/community/index.php?s...6fdce9b8eef31ab9cac&

I just took in a Greven Nick Lucas in trade - gorgeous guitar, but very much vintage Gibson rather than vintage Martin.

Andrew

Hey Rick, Thanks for the link. Lots of info there. Much appreciated.

You are quite welcome Jaco.
You'll find quite a few builders on that board as well as some really good players.
Lots of good stuff over there.

Jaco - I've only ever played one Greven, 'twas a couple years ago. Everyone who played that guitar thought it was a dud. We all believe this guitar was unrepresentative.

That said, I don't want to get too far into bashing John's work. I've met him and found him to be a wonderful guy - friendly, knowledgeable, fun.

The community at APM loves John's work. For what it's worth, I've had extended email correspondence with several now-former owners that had a fair number of issues with Greven's quality. Very unfavorable.

If you're looking for that pre-war Martin vibe you might go to the Martin Forum and ask folks over there. Lots of opinions!

I pretty much echo FreeBlues on this one as well. I've played 6 of them (one for an entire weekend at my home while I test drove it) and I was always left feeling less than impressed and wondering what all the hype and hooplah was about. That being said, the guys at APM rave about them, and they even have a special "Grevenistas" club for owners to gush over their guitars, so either I'm simply missing something or maybe I've been unfortunate and I've only played his less impressive work... I'm not sure either way, but you may want to play a few and decide for yourself before taking the plunge on commissioning a custom build.

Late to the party but I thought I would add that I played Greven's 2005 Healdsburg Guitar Festival guitars and thought they were quite good in both appearance and sound. I have heard about some structural problems in a few guitars but I think that issue is a thing of the past. Another luthier whose guitars I liked at that festival was Mustapick. McKnight is also doing some fine work on his newer guitars. A guitar that I own, an Albert Mueller S-6, is a super guitar (some choices now available at Dream Guitars). Happy hunting.
Rick

I'm a former owner of Greven guitar. Not because of how it sounded. That part was great, but the quality of building was unacceptable. Guitar had many major failures that were mostly fixed by John but in the end i didnt wanted to keep it myself. So i sold it away. I think his biggest problems are in quality control or maybe hes doing too much work? It was nice to hear that i wasnt over hysterical about it. Since then i have read other people dealing with same kind of issues. I do not think that these problems are a thing of the past. My guitar was made only few years ago. But many people do appreciate his guitar very high in terms of looks and sounds. That might be very true if you get one without any issues.

This message has been edited. Last edited by: Johnny,

The Greven I have in right now really nails the vintage Gibson small-body sound. Folks who love that sound would really appreciate the guitar's accuracy, folks expecting a Martin would think the guitar sounded lousy.

Andrew

quote:

Originally posted by JKR:
Having said that, if I were in the market for an OM model, I'd look first at Bourgeois, Borges , and Sexauer

Or maybe even a Collings. They are all wonderful guitars. Recently I have been thinking that unless you are the type of person that keeps a guitar for a long long time the smartest thing might be to buy from one of the small shop builders, not a one man band. Collings, Bourgeois, Santa Cruz, Huss and Dalton etc. Also, might be best to find a used example of one of these guitars rather than buying new.