This is my Dowina Grand Auditorium steel strung acoustic guitar. I have it in open C or one of the many variants, tunings I found by looking into the music of Robbie Basho and others. I bought it from Richards Guitars in Stratford and it's one of the best purchases I've made.

I can't say if it's better than any of the other big name guitars but I've never played a better acoustic guitar. It has that balance which makes an acoustic so enjoyable to play and it suits my style of playing as I normally like to drive the guitar with complex right hand picking. The LR Baggs pickup is loud and clear. I can mix the internal mic and pickup from controls at the soundhole. The guitar police love to come up at gigs and tell me all about it, how best to use it and how they were thinking of buying one the same but went for a better model. Bless.

I'm told it was hand made in Slovakia by a Czech maker. The top is spruce, the back and sides Padauk. I like a wide enough neck to be able to 'work' the fingerboard and this one is perfect. I can't be sure but I like to think that the spruce tops aren't that different from the wood used to make all those high-end Italian violins. I do know that there was at one time a cottage industry of very good fiddle makers in Bohemia and Moravia. I feel confident that this guitar was made by someone who knows their trade.

There's only one tiny little thing that I'd have requested and that's to have bigger and brighter fret markers on the side of the neck (there are none on the fretboard). I just use little dots of white tippex to see where I'm going.