Ep. 6: Lloyd Baggs

These days, Lloyd Baggs (LR Baggs) is synonymous with great acoustic guitar pickup systems. But it hasn't been easy. This self-taught tinkerer - who started building one-of-a-kind acoustic guitars for legendary musicians in the '70s and early '80s - only turned to sound amplification after an eye-opening experience with Ry Cooder. "[After that] I spent so much time thinking about pickups," he remembers, "I stopped building guitars." During our chat, Baggs recounts the ups-and-downs of perfecting pickups, the importance of a pre-amp for gigging musicians, his work for various brands (including Breedlove) and describes how he's returned to his first love... building acoustics.    It's a fascinating chat with one of the music industry's true pioneers.  Acoustic Voices: A Guitar Podcast is an all-new collaboration between Breedlove Guitars and the Fretboard Journal magazine. We hope you enjoy it. Our music is by Luke Basile. https://breedlovemusic.com/ https://www.fretboardjournal.com/ Love the show? Leave us a review on Apple Podcasts and share it with your friends.

What makes for a sustainable tonewood? What does FSC-certified actually mean? On today's Acoustic Voices Podcast, we learn both and a lot more from Nicholas Weber, the founder of Guitar Tonewoods.  Weber has spent decades working with forest managers and guitar companies, sourcing far-flung woods that will eventually show up on instruments. Today Guitar Tonewoods specializes in FSC-certified-only woods (including mahogany, ebony, cedar and rosewoods), all harvested selectively from sustainable forests.    From GT's headquarters in Spain, Weber walks us through what these tropical forests are like today, how they are managed, and how technology plays a vital role in making sure they will be around for the next generations. It's a fascinating chat for anyone who wonders about the materials that go into their guitars.  Acoustic Voices: A Guitar Podcast is an all-new collaboration between Breedlove Guitars and the Fretboard Journal magazine. We hope you enjoy it. Our music is by Luke Basile. https://breedlovemusic.com/ https://www.fretboardjournal.com/ Love the show? Leave us a review on Apple Podcasts and share it with your friends.

Ingenuity. We love it in our guitars and in our musicians. For this episode, we talk to a pair of artists who may not be on your radar yet, but will be soon: the Native Heart's Jon Torrance is a fanatical music educator and musician based in Michigan. He relishes the new, whether it's genres, covers, or skills like video editing. We then check in with Santa Barbara, California singer-songwriter Conner Cherland, a young artist with a knack for writing songs... a lot of songs. He talks about his unique and prolific creative process ("When you're failing constantly, you want to get better quickly"), his favorite Breedlove guitars and a lot more. https://www.facebook.com/thenativeheartmusic https://connercherland.com Acoustic Voices: A Guitar Podcast is an all-new collaboration between Breedlove Guitars and the Fretboard Journal magazine. We hope you enjoy it. https://breedlovemusic.com/ https://www.fretboardjournal.com/ Love the show? Leave us a review on Apple Podcasts and share it with your friends.

As interest in domestic guitar woods reaches an all-time high, we talk to Oregon-based Cyril Jacob, who handpicks the unique Oregon myrtlewood that Breedlove Guitars uses for their instruments. Every day, Jacob is on a virtual scavenger hunt: traveling through the Pacific Northwest sourcing fallen trees and trees that have reached the end of their life cycle. Besides being local to Breedlove, myrtlewood has some unique traits making it near-perfect for instrument making: a wide range of colors and arguably the most uniform cellular structure of any wood on the planet. For our third episode of Acoustic Voices, we talk to Jacob about his daily routine sourcing wood up and down the Oregon coast. We also chat to Washington-based musician Luke Basile. In addition to being a stellar guitarist, Basile is also lead engineer at Rainmaker Studios. He helps explain some of myrtlewood's strengths and describes his rather incredible Breedlove collection.  Acoustic Voices: A Guitar Podcast is an all-new collaboration between Breedlove Guitars and the Fretboard Journal magazine. We hope you enjoy it. https://breedlovemusic.com/ https://www.fretboardjournal.com/ Love the show? Leave us a review on Apple Podcasts and share it with your friends.

Guitarist Chris Arndt is a throwback of sorts: An early obsession with classic rock had him sitting in with bar bands while he was still in elementary school. Today, he's one-half of the brother-sister duo, Jocelyn and Chris. With a few stellar albums already under their belt, they're navigating the music industry in a thoroughly unique way.  For our second episode of Acoustic Voices, Chris talks to us from his home in upstate New York. We chat about the influences they had growing up, the live stream concerts he and his sister have produced during the pandemic, his current music obsessions and more. Of course, we also talk guitars. Plus: Michael Eck walks us through the history of the dreadnought and gives us an overview of Breedlove's new Organic Collection. Music courtesy of Luke Basile, played on a Breedlove Oregon Concertina guitar. Acoustic Voices: A Guitar Podcast is an all-new collaboration between Breedlove Guitars and the Fretboard Journal magazine. We hope you enjoy it. http://jocelynandchrismusic.com https://breedlovemusic.com/ https://www.fretboardjournal.com/ Love the show? Leave us a review on Apple Podcasts and share it with your friends.

Tom Bedell caught the guitar - and business - bug early. He was a successful guitar teacher, guitar importer and guitar store owner while he was still in high school. He’d go on to attend college, work as a political consultant, and successfully grow his family's fishing tackle business into an empire. Bedell's love for guitars never waned, though, and in 2010 he purchased Breedlove.  For the debut episode of Acoustic Voices, we talk to Bedell about his upbringing, the challenges of running a boutique guitar company in 2021, his hope for the future, and about his commitment to the environment when it comes to their wood choices. Michael Eck also joins us for a Breedlove history lesson and an homage to small-bodied parlor guitars. Music courtesy of Luke Basile, played on a Breedlove Oregon Concertina guitar.  Acoustic Voices: A Guitar Podcast is an all-new collaboration between Breedlove Guitars and the Fretboard Journal magazine. We hope you enjoy it.  https://breedlovemusic.com/ https://www.fretboardjournal.com/ Love the show? Leave us a review on Apple Podcasts and share it with your friends.

Welcome to Acoustic Voices, a new podcast collaboration between the Fretboard Journal and Breedlove Guitars. Once a month, we'll talk to some of the people that make this guitar brand unique, learn about music history, sustainability and much more. Launches January 2021.