Balaguer Espada Select Ambient Semi-Hollow Guitar, Gloss Vintage White

PLAYER'S PERSPECTIVE

We're legitimately stoked to start carrying these awesome new Select Ambient semi-hollow Espadas from our friends over at Balaguer! Here's one in a classic Vintage White finish.

I'll be honest - as a player myself, picking up this guitar for the first time truly shocked me. This has got to be one of the most underrated models to have been released this year - Balaguer hit an absolute home run. It combines the best aspects of a "JM"-style offset guitar with the tonality and aesthetic sensibilities of a vintage thinline semi-hollow while adding contemporary high-end features like a satin-finished roasted maple neck, locking tuners, a rounded-off neck joint for improved upper-fret access, and stainless steel frets to create something completely new and incredible in its own right.

The Select Ambient Espada features an alder body with the aforementioned roasted maple neck and gorgeous ebony fretboard, a 25.5"-inch scale length and a "JM"-style tremolo bridge, which gives it all the snap, feel and playability of a "JM" offset, but the amazing-sounding foil humbuckers and semi-hollow construction give it the traditional plugged-in tone, air and response of an "ES"-style semi-hollow. The pickups sound fantastic, like low-output PAF humbuckers but with a hint of chime and sparkle reminiscent of Filtertron-style pickups, P90s, or DynaSonics. If that wasn't enough, the coil-splits are very convincing - they could definitely approximate a vintage JM or T-style guitar pretty nicely.

On top of all of that, the craziest thing about this guitar is the price. Bona fide Custom Shop-level features and build quality for under $1500? Like, what?

This is a guitar that needs to be played to be believed, no joke. Come give one a try, you might find it to be your new #1.