❌SOLD❌ Larrivee Steel String Guitar Natural, 1974

This Larrivee Steel String brings a bit of Canadian musical history, being an early steel model built during 1974 at Larrivee’s first formal shop, above the Tarragon Theatre near Bathurst and Dupont in Toronto.

Jean Larrivée began building at his home around 1967. At that time, if you were interested in building guitars you read the very few books on the subject or met an established builder. Larrivee wound up doing both, meeting German classical guitar builder Edgar Monch who was working in Toronto during this period. Monch’s influence is clearly seen in Larrivee’s work including his current L-body designs. For several years Larrivée worked in the basement of his home, but in 1970 obtained shop space above the Tarragon Theatre. There, the long-gone Toronto Folklore Center encouraged him to build some steel string guitars. Staff started to appear, including William Laskin, David Wren, Linda Manzer, Sergei de Jonge and Tony Duggan-Smith. The rest is not just history – it’s also a lot of very good guitars.

Combining design principles from the classical guitar world with the demands of steel strings, this 1974 Larrivée steel string guitar uses the familiar mix of a Red Cedar top with Sitka Spruce bracing, Indian Rosewood for the sides, back and head plate, Mahogany for the body blocks and neck, and Ebony for the fingerboard and bridge. The neck joint uses a Dovetail, traditional for steel string models, rather than the traditional Spanish ‘slipper heel’ joint. The tuners are Grover Roto-Matics.

This guitar has been played a lot over its 49 years, and sounds like it. The Larrivee body produces a rich, evenly balanced tone and this guitar’s voice has fully developed. It sounds great.

Fret wear is moderate to heavy particularly in the lower positions with matching finish wear on the neck. On the body, the finish is in pretty good condition; the guitar has not been abused, but wear and small bumps and dings happen. The action is quite reasonable, but the saddle is quite low, so at some point a neck reset may be helpful.

A black hard shell case is included.