Reviewed in Harmony Central:
Features : 9
Made by Nelson Palen in 2007 after a waiting time of 17 months, this is an archtop guitar in all solid woods. The top is hand carved spruce and the back and sides are flamed maple. The floating pickup is a Kent Armstrong with thumbwheel pots for volume and tone located under the ebony pickgard.
Sound : 10
I am very impressed with its acoustic sound, I had the opportunity to try a lot of archtops here in Montréal (Montreal Guitar Show 2007) made by the world´s best luthiers Comins, Hopkins, Monteleone, Ribbecke, Manzer. Their guitars were magnificent, but none inspired me as much as the Palen guitar – the acoustic tone, the projection, the overtones are fantastic.
Action, Fit, & Finish : 10
Nelson’s craft work is perfect – I have a lot of guitars, and this the best one, the action and the finish are perfect.
Reliability/Durability : – –
A guitar of this style and quality requires gentle handling and care – not designed for abuse.
Customer Support : 10
Nelson Palen and Lou Del Rosso (from Guitars N’ jazz) are fantastic, I’m not very good in English and both of them took time to answer all my requests. During the progress of my guitar, Mr. Palen took time to send me a lot of pictures of my guitar.
Overall Rating : 10
Like I said this is the best guitar I have, I was dreaming about a good Jazz guitar for a long time, and now, I have a better guitar then I was expecting. Thank you very much Nelson Palen and Lou Del Rosso.
– Sylvain Contant; Montréal, Canada