Tuned lower than a standard six-string, baritone guitars have seen a great increase in popularity in recent years. Primarily developed by individual luthiers during the 1990s, acoustic baritones are now offered by many manufacturers and at almost every price level. Santa Cruz was one of the first production shops to add a baritone to its line after working with fingerstyle and blues guitarist Bob Brozman in the late ’90s. Since then, the DBB has become a standard model, and it continues to be a favorite of baritone guitar fans, so I was happy to take Santa Cruz up on an offer to check out a recently built instrument before it got sent to The Fellowship of Acoustics in the Netherlands.
The Santa Cruz baritone has a 12-fret dreadnought body with a 27-inch scale. This results in an instrument that, while definitely large, feels more compact than baritones with longer scales, 14-fret necks, and jumbo bodies. Like all Santa Cruz guitars, DBBs can be ordered in a dizzying array of wood combinations (the original Bob Brozman signature model was built with koa back and sides), and several combinations are available at the base price. With its Indian rosewood back and sides and German spruce top, our demo guitar falls within the standard options. As with anything labeled “standard” on a Santa Cruz instrument, the woods are of top-shelf quality. The guitar has a herringbone rosette and purfling, ivoroid binding, and diamonds-and-squares position markers in the fingerboard. Our demo guitar also has a slotted peghead.
I’ve played several Santa Cruz baritones over the years (most recently a pair built with koa and Indian rosewood that I used to demo the Santa Cruz Parabolic Tension baritone strings), and I’ve always been impressed by their deep voice and playability. This most recent guitar follows
right in those instruments’ footsteps. Santa Cruz tunes their baritones from C to C at the shop, and our demo guitar sounds great with more tension than the more common B to B tuning. Regardless of whether the guitar is tuned to C or B, it has a great low-end rumble, but also plenty of clarity for upper voices and chords. Playability was excellent, and because the guitar’s 27-inch scale is on the shorter end of the baritone spectrum, it doesn’t feel as unwieldy as some baritones.
More than 20 years after its introduction, the Santa Cruz DBB continues to be an excellent choice for players looking to expand their tonal palette with a high-end baritone. There are more options than ever, but Santa Cruz honed in on a great baritone concept from the start, and the model is as relevant as ever!
SPECS: Baritone guitar with 12-fret dreadnought body. German spruce top with X-bracing. Indian rosewood back and sides. Mahogany neck. Ebony rosewood fretboard and bridge. 27-inch scale. 1⅞-inch nut width. Waverly tuning machines. Made in USA. $8,000. santacruzguitar.com
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