UK manufacturer Tanglewood has quite a number of parlor guitars available, and this time we look at the TW40 PD, from their Sundance Delta series. This parlor guitar features an all mahogany body with aesthetics inspired by vintage instruments.
Its main feature is the solid mahogany top, which are carved from hand selected wood, to ensure cosmetic quality, stability and resonance. The top is supported by laminated mahogany back and sides, all of which form the familiar small-body parlor guitar shape. This combination results in an earthy overall appearance, and have a warmer fuller tone, with plenty of midrange emphasis.
The story goes that Scandinavian master luthier Michael Sanden designed this guitar with ’40s era guitars in mind, while implementing his distinct tapered parallel bracing system. He even developed the quarter sawn spruce braces for this parlor guitar to match the solid mahogany top in terms of sound production and structural integrity.
The company expounds, “The bracing was adjusted in prototype stages to attain the maximum sonic impact and tone, and upon testing each of the three body styles, our luthier team can report that there is a genuine uniformity across the body range, due in no small part to the care and attention paid to each tops flexibility.”
The neck is also crafted from mahogany, and is topped by a rosewood fingerboard. Interestingly, the Tanglewood TW40 PD comes with a longer than usual scale length of 25.6″, which contrasts the usual shorter scale lengths of vintage parlor guitars. Nut width is also slightly wider at 1.69″, working together with the neck’s long scale length to give the same playability as that of a regular sized acoustic guitar.
The headstock follows a square taper, and is not slotted, but it does evoke an old school appeal nonetheless. Other features include rosewood bridge, black & white ABS binding for the top, black ABS binding for the back, compensated saddle, small enclosed chrome tuners and ivory ABS bridge pins with black dots.
The Tanglewood Sundance Delta TW40 PD Parlor guitar is currently retailing for around $620.
