Here is a great video of one of my latest builds, an OM Cutaway with a German Spruce Top and Cocobolo back and sides. Credit to Matt Thomas for his beautiful playing and Alan Drake at Cedar Rock Studio Guitar Gallery in Shelburn, Indiana. You can find the listing for this guitar on their website here.
I was featured again on one of Stevie’s Friday Noontime Sessions at Mighty Fine Guitars. I brought him a Single O with a Sitka Spruce top and Macassar Ebony back and sides. Stevie makes that guitar sound incredible! Needless to say, that build didn’t hang around in the showroom for very long!
Marcus from The Golden Era Guitar was visiting California on sort of a luthier meet-and-greet trip. He and I were able to set aside some time for him to come by the house and set up a little interview and guitar demo. We chatted about four of my latest builds, a few of their cool features, and explained some of my thought process on choosing parts and specifications. Afterwards, Marcus recorded a separate video playing each of the guitars individually to compare how they sound. It was great to finally meet him and spend the afternoon chatting and recording these videos!
@0:05 - Datlen 0-12 Engelmann/Cocobolo
@1:10 - Datlen OM-C German/"The Tree" Quilted Mahogany
@2:09 - Datlen OM Sitka/Ovangkol
@3:10 - Datlen OM Carpathian/Guatemalan Rosewood
A few months ago, my daughter introduced me to a woman who works for our local newspaper, The Napa Register. When I mentioned my work as an independent luthier, she put me into contact with Tim Carl to do a story for the Inside Napa Valley Magazine. Tim, a wonderful interviewer and photographer, came by the workshop a few months later to chat about my story, how I got into woodworking, and why I picked up guitar building. The result turned out better than I could’ve imagined.
I want to give a huge thanks to Norma, Tim, and the Napa Register for featuring Datlen Luthiery in the Spring/Summer Edition of Inside Napa Valley. For copyright reasons I can’t post the whole article, so to read the rest, click the button below.
Stevie Coyle from Mighty Fine Guitars invited me to his studio again to chat about the guitars I planned to bring to the Laconner Guitar Festival in May. This is a two-part video, first featuring musician Mark Vickness, and then transitioning to my segment with Stevie at 26:00.
We first look at my Cocobolo Single O, then my Ovangkol OM, and finish with an OM Cutaway I built from “Tree” Mahogany. All three of these builds are available for purchase directly from my workshop.
What’s also really cool is that Mark stayed around for my interview and gave some great insight on the sounds coming from my instruments.
Enjoy!
Last year, I was contacted by a client named Jack to build a couple of guitars for him. What’s interesting is that Jack wanted two identical guitars, except for the top wood–one for fingerstyle and one for flat-picking. What’s also cool is that he trusted me to build a size and model that I had never built before.
Jack wanted a large guitar with no frills. After a few emails back and forth, we settled on a design. My new Jumbo model is roughly the size of a Gibson J-185, but I redesigned the body shape and braced it accordingly.
It was a really fun project to design and build these guitars. I really appreciated Jack’s confidence in me since this was somewhat uncharted territory. Jack was also kind enough to contribute some background and his thoughts on the guitars I built for him.
“So, about last spring I had the idea to commission a couple of instruments, just as a way to get back on track with music and guitars. My wife and I had experienced a period there where our son’s health was very poor, and I found myself in the position of having the sell quite a lot of my collection to fund medical expenses. Just what needed to be done. But he is getting better, slowly, and I was really missing my passion.
I happened to run into a video posted on the Mighty Fine Guitars website of Stevie Coyle interviewing an up-and-coming California luthier named John Datlen. I checked his work out as much as I could on the web and then phoned him and took the plunge. John is a truly humble and straightforward kind of guy. We had no trouble establishing a connection, though we lived thousands of miles apart. He had been considering adding a new model to his lineup, what might be roughly called a OOOO. I like a little bigger guitar, so we decided to go ahead with this new model and make a sort of matching pair, one in Engelmann/Cocobolo and one in Adirondack/Cocobolo.
“In short, the guitars are both amazing, absolutely first-class in every way, not so much as the tiniest flaw in either of them. The general fit and finish is perfect, the purfling and binding miters are perfect, the entire scheme of both guitars is executed perfectly. It’s as though you walked into a great guitar shop and just picked out the two most beautiful, compelling guitars you could imagine and brought them home.
The Engelmann/Cocobolo was constructed with more of an impulse toward fingerstyle playing. This guitar has quite a velvet, creamy sound to it–a very flowing, articulate kind of sound, if that makes any sense, plenty loud and rich. The Adirondack/Cocobolo has a much more fundamental sound to it, more of a penetrating, dynamic kind of sound. This is exactly what I was hoping for when John and I embarked on this project.
“I play mostly fingerstyle, so that was the idea behind the Engelmann guitar, but I'm also dabbling in more single-note playing, so I thought an Adirondack guitar might work really well for this. I also think, though I haven't had too much time to experiment, that the Adirondack guitar will work really well for the stuff I play in alternate tunings. It's amazing how good these guitars both sound now, both around a month or so old; it will be truly interesting and intriguing to see how the sound of each develops and matures as time goes on.
Best, Jack”
Jack was a pleasure to work with on this new project. My OM had been the largest guitar I offered, until now.
I am so pleased with how these guitars came out and I’m delighted to announce that the Jumbo is officially being added to my lineup.
Josh has been shooting photos of my guitars for a couple of years now with exceptional talent, skill, and passion. It's very clear why he's been named one of the Bay Area's most prominent photographers. All principal photography of finished guitars on my website were taken by Josh.
Josh is extremely multi-faceted and does so much more than photos of my builds, and you can see his other work at the following links:
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/joshisaacsphotography/
Website: http://www.jjisaacs.com
Instagram: https://instagram.com/joshisaacsphotography/
I recently sent a guitar to Marcus at The Golden Era Guitar in Singapore, who is officially my first international dealer. Here is a video of Marcus sharing his thoughts and playing a Single O built with Ziricote and Engelmann Spruce.
The crew at Golden Era Guitar has such a high level of expertise and attention to detail, which can be appreciated by anyone who works with Marcus and his team to order a Datlen build. Thanks for the kind words and great song Marcus!
You can find out more about The Golden Era Guitar at the following links:
- Website: https://www.thegoldeneraguitar.com/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/thegoldeneraguitar/
I sat down with Stevie from Mighty Fine Guitars to talk about my Single 0, the updates I've made to the OM body shape, and some of the other builds I have down in their Lafayette showroom.
Give them a Like on Facebook!: https://www.facebook.com/MightyFineGuitars/
Or visit their website: http://mightyfineguitars.com/
