Baden A Style Acoustic Electric Rosewood / Cedar w/ OHSC || Fishman Pickup

This is a rare A Style Baden sporting a minimalist design and unique cutaway. All solid woods and all handmade. This represents the top of that line at the time with Cedar top and East Indian Rosewood back and sides. This is a boutique guitar at a bargain price. TJ Baden, former VP at Taylor guitars started the company and put out designs ahead of their time and had them built by master luthiers in Vietnam. This has only a couple notable flaws: there is a ding on the front, a scratch on the back and wear along the bottom edges. All are pictured. It plays beautifully. The Fishman Matrix Infinity is a fantastic pickup and pairs well with this guitar, without hindering its natural sound. Comes with original hardshell case. Unfortunately, the company is no longer in business (the late 2000s was a bad time to start a revolutionary guitar company). So there are not many of these around. Grab it while you can. This is alot of guitar for the price.

I apologize for the length BUT because Reverb does not allow links in listings, here is an excerpt from from a 2008 Premier Guitar Magazine article by Adam Moore about the Baden A style:

When T.J. Baden hit the scene with Baden Guitars in the middle of 2006, introducing the staid acoustic market to his stripped-down, deconstructed approach, he inadvertently started one hell of an argument. One camp of critics maintained that the lack of ornament on his guitars spoke to a renewed interest in getting back to the music—the fact that there were only two guitars in the Baden catalog, an auditorium and a dreadnought, available in three different wood configurations, confirmed this; another camp found the lack of flash, not to mention fret markers, oddly pretentious—it seemed like just another designer hiding a dearth of ideas behind a veil of minimalism. . .

In the interest of full disclosure, I should say that I am a supporter of minimalism – I’ve always gravitated towards artists like Mark Rothko and have long contended that Dieter Rams is a genius (if you don’t agree, go play with an iPod and then Google “Braun T3”). So it’s probably no surprise that I was quickly drawn in by the a-style’s simplicity. There are no ornate inlays, no dots, no bindings—just beautiful mahogany and cedar woods on display (maple and rosewood options are also available). Even the brand on the headstock remains true to Baden’s aesthetic, bypassing the abalone and carving the name “baden” (all lowercase, of course) directly into the peghead overlay. The stark cutaway-but-not-a-cutaway— a major point of engagement between the pro and anti crowds—is a bold move that pays off in my book, providing both fret access and Picasso-esque abstraction to the design. On a certain level, it would seem that T.J. has succeeded in his goal of bringing attention back to the guitar itself; the lack of ornament makes you focus even more on the guitar’s bare, curvaceous shape.

Part of what makes the a-style’s bold minimalism work is the craftsmanship; these handmade guitars, produced by master luthiers in Vietnam, should redefine the expectations for foreign built instruments. The body work is flawless at all points, inside and out, and the hand-carved mahogany neck, shaped into a shallow C but still maintaining enough “meat” to feel solid, is both fast and substantial. From the neatly cut bone nut and bridge to the guitar’s perfectly understated gloss finish, everything about this guitar feels thought out and well done.

Stripped Sounds
Of course, there has been so much debate over Baden’s unique visual style that it seems little attention has been paid to how they play. From the outset, I discovered some clear Taylor influences cleverly hidden within the guitar—no surprise, considering T.J. cut his teeth with the company. Combining a 25 1/2” scale length with a 1 23/32” nut width, the guitar is quick and responsive, and has an ease of play that harkens back to the instruments emerging from El Cajon, California—something that, depending on your acoustic allegiances, you’ll either dig or detest. The cutaway (technically not a cutaway; the guitar is built in two halves) provides easy access up to the 18th fret, and the a-style’s playability will encourage you to make good use of it.

For those familiar with cedar-topped acoustics, you’ll find many of the same acoustic properties in this particular model. The cedar provides an enveloping warmth to the guitar’s inherent sweetness and clarity, making it an appropriate choice for solo fingerstyle work or easy strumming. In fact, searching for the right word to describe the guitar’s personality continually brought me back to the word balance; there’s just enough of everything across the entire sonic spectrum. No one string or timbre jumps out of place here, and when played with a delicate enough touch the notes all ring and chime like gorgeously orchestrated bells. The a-style would be a great choice for players seeking nuance in their instruments, as well as for the newer breed of fingerstylists who rapidly shift between strumming and picking and need a guitar that can keep up. . .