Which guitar?

Marcus1970 · May 4

Hello, my name is Marcus and I am getting into gypsy jazz,planning to buy a gypsy guitar. I am interested in an Altamira M01, M10. Are these good guitars or does anyone have other/better suggestions? Thanks in advance.

MikeK · May 4

Welcome to the forum, Marcus. I've owned an Altamira M-01 and 2 M-10's and in my opinion, they're top notch for reasonably priced, well-made, reliable gypsy jazz guitars. If you end up interested in purchasing a used one, I have an M-10 antique oval hole for sale here on this forum. You can PM me if you have any questions about it. If you end up wanting to purchase a new one, Michael here at Djangobooks will take very good care of you.

cbwim · May 4

I was in Seattle and visited Michael and tried out a few guitars. One of these was the magnificent Selmer #98 that Bireli Lagrene performed on when he was 11 years old. Its a beautiful guitar to look at and hold. But for my small hands the wide and flat fingerboard was way too much.

I was also very interested in the Altamira Travel Guitar M01D that he has listed. The fingerboard width and curvature is similar to my Shelley Park guitar. Its nice and short at 570mm. One thing that delights me is that this guitar has pliage (curvature from the upper to the lower end of the top, as well as side to side) which increases the angle of the strings on the bridge. The tone quality is great. I upgraded to Schaller Tuners and a DR Tailpiece, and setup by John Saba who does great work. I left my Shelley Park guitar behind as reference and will pick up both later this month. This will be a great guitar for travel.

Note - the string length on Shelley's guitar here is 660mm. She normally uses 640 or 670mm on her D-Holed guitars.