What can I say about the Camrielles? I own one. After years of vintage guitar worship, it feels strange to admit that. After all, these are thoroughly modern instruments: radical bracing, tapered body, bolt-on graphite-reinforced neck, sharp cutaway, Feiten tuning system... and that offset soundhole! But the ears don't lie, and I've never heard anything quite like my McPherson. It makes sounds I've tried for years to get other guitars to make, and it does so effortlessly. Notes ring out against each other without clashing, sustaining improbably long and swirling around like starlings over a Wisconsin cornfield. And, to my never-ending delight, every note on the guitar is spot-on in tune. All the awkward, up-the-neck passages from my fingerstyle repertoire that never were quite in tune on a standard acoustic suddenly fell into line on the McPherson. It sounds like a magic trick, and maybe that's just what it is.
Just when I thought I'd never hear a guitar better than my EIR/Sitka 4.5 Camrielle, in walks the exact same model, but in Brazilian Rosewood and Adirondack spruce. Vive la difference! The marimba key quality of the back and sides plus the immediate response and aching clarity of the master-grade top takes this guitar to the next level. For those who think that tonewood selection is all hype and marketing, I challenge you to come and see what the folks at McPherson can do with some world-class wood.
- Rob Sharer, Sound Pure Luthier
