Edwinson EPS Performance standard
In year 2000, it was my great good fortune to have found Aaron Andrews as my new housemate and shop partner. He was earning his living as a guitar repairman, and building beautiful guitars of his own design as well. Somehow, we wound up meeting across the table, with pints of beer in front of us, and found we had a lot in common to talk about We became friends, and then shop mates. Aaron guided me through the whole process of building that first guitar. And well, I built the first Edwinson guitar. It turned out way better than I could have reasonably hoped.
The decorative appointments of my first guitar were rather naive, one might even say rustic, but the guitar sounded wonderful, better than any other guitar I’d ever owned. I was hooked. Evenings, weekends, and vacations were devoted to building more guitars, deepening my knowledge, and bringing my craftsmanship and design chops to a higher level.
Since then, the Performance Standard has gotten more horsepower, better controls, and more fuel efficiency.
I’m still using the same templates, body molds, and other implements that I made for the first Performance guitar. The design has advanced, but the Performance Standard guitars I’m currently making are still essentially the same as that first one.
David came to visit about a year ago, and he brought his guitar over to get the setup tweaked a bit. The guitar was obviously played a lot, but well-loved and cared for. There were no issues whatsoever with its construction; it’s still a tight ship. All it needed was a truss rod adjustment, and a new saddle with correct intonation for David’s open tunings.
The thing that really blew me away was how splendidly the voice had opened up and matured. The guitar was still pretty fresh when I handed it over to David, and after several years of his daily playing on it, it had bloomed like a rose. I’m always amazed at how guitars continue to develop, and become invested with their owner’s mojo.
The Performance Standard has a special place in my heart. This is the guitar that created Edwinson.
Edwinson EPS Performance Standard Specs
Overall length: 41 1/2” Soundbox length: 20” Width, lower bout: 16 1/4”
Width, waist: 9 1/2” Width, upper bout: 11 7/8”
Body depth @ lower bout: 3 7/8”
Body depth @ waist: 4 3/8” (This is the deepest part of the soundbox)
Body depth @ neck joint: 4”
Back radius: 15’ Top radius 25’
Scale length: 25”, 25.375”, 25.5”, or 25.75”
Fingerboard width @ nut: 1 3/4” or 1 13/16”
Fingerboard width @ fourteenth fret: 2 1/8” or 2 3/16”
Fingerboard radius: 14”, 16”, or 20”
Headstock: Delta P with Gotoh tuners
Bridge: Talon 6.3 pinned bridge with fully intonated bone saddle
Neck joint: Mortise and tenon bolt-on, with cantilevered fingerboard extension
and Spanish foot style neck block.
Top bracing: Edwinson P jointed X-fan hybrid with carbon fiber bridge plate
Back bracing: Lower bout X, cross braces upper.
Trim features:
Rosette: One-of-a-kind, in exotic woods, abalone or pearl shell;
bound sound hole, 4” diameter
Fully bound and purfled body, fingerboard, headstock, and sound hole;
Wood bindings always, never plastic;
Rear headstock plate (also called “backstrap”);
Edwinson logo headstock inlay in pearl, abalone, or hardwood burl;
Fret position markers on edge and top of fingerboard, in pearl or abalone;
Inlaid center seam and lower bout end graft to match (or complement) bindings;
All purfling lines are mitered, not butted.
Optional auxiliary sound port, upper bout, driver’s side.
These are general, standard specs. There are some dimensions which are subject to change, such as scale length, body depth, neck dimensions, and so on. Many of these factors are mutable because they can be designed to the player’s preferences in aspects of sound and playability. The measurements below are the “default settings”.
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