Breedlove Guitars takes sustainability to the next level with their ECO Collection. We got our hands on a Tiger’s Eye CE Myrtlewood to see how it felt in our hands and how it felt to play an acoustic guitar while being conscious of our planet.
Breedlove Guitars has been making instruments for over 30 years from Bend, Oregon. Leaving California to head north, luthiers Larry Breedlove and Steve Henderson left behind their work at Taylor guitars to dream up a vision of what they — and you — want from an acoustic guitar.
They’ve just launched their ECO collection that sees them use Exotic wood in a sustainable manner. When a guitar from the series arrived at our office we were eager to see how it sounded and what we could learn from sustainable practices in brand new instruments.
As well as making guitars signature for movie stars like Jeff Bridges, Breedlove Guitars has a huge range of acoustic guitars, ukuleles and acoustic basses that has shown the world that you can use alternative tonewoods such as Oregon myrtlewood which they started using in their craft 25 years ago.
Unboxing the ECO Collection Pursuit Exotic Series Concert Tiger’s Eye CE Myrtlewood, the first thing you notice is the weight. It’s a hefty instrument that feels well built with beautiful detail. Upon first strum the neck is silky smooth and the setup — straight from the factory — is very easy to play. It’s always a process letting a new instrument ‘settle’ in, but this guitar sounded balanced from my first E major chord.
Picking an acoustic guitar (pun intended…) can be a hard thing, so why not make it easier on your conscience by buying sustainable? The ECO Collection contains technology they call EcoTonewood. It has a resonant core layer of individually harvested African mahogany where most manufacturers use softwoods — that not only isn’t striving for the best tone, it just might be robbing our planet’s tree population.
Breedlove Guitars has also experimented with body shapes over the decades to come up with a design that maximises tone. It’s this body shape that sends out a balanced tone. Speaking of tone, the ECO Collection comes with a Fishman Presys I pickup. Being a one of the world’s most trusted acoustic guitar pickup brands this Fishman pickup is super simple, with Volume, Tuner, Contour and a Phase.
We plugged this in, and with no surprise the pickup had a super clean sound — even cranked all the way up. The tuner was simple and easy to use, and of course it mutes the signal while tuning.
The Contour button is a simple EQ adjustment — Button up/out is a natural sound, Button down/in is a classic “scooped/smiley” EQ curve with low and high boosts and mid range cut.
Unbeknown to live performers, the Phase button can be useful when you are in a loud environment to suppress feedback or at a low volume to boost bass response as it will invert the phase — useful in different live performance spaces.
The ECO Collection acoustic guitar we played comes in at $1399 RRP AUD which I found really surprising given the attention to detail and the use of sustainable materials. The bridge, tuners, and binding is high quality, and suits the design on this instrument.
With a stunning design, clear conscience build, great feel and tone on point, this guitar is great for intermediate to advanced players. It’s got all the traits that are seen in more expensive instruments at a much lower price point and I back the feeling of this guitar when you play it, and it’s clear sound.
For more information head over to Breedlovemusic.com
