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Around 1998 I was fortunate to meet and become friends with acclaimed dutch Archtop builder Daniel Slaman.
I had played a number of jazzguitars before over the years from all the well known companies like Gibson, Guild etc. We met through a student of mine and after I visited his workplace for the first time, I imediatly liked his instruments and his approach and love towards making them. He is an incredibly sincere and honest craftsman with "down to earth" vision on the realization of musicians idea's. Soon I ordered my first Slaman Custom (a Thinline model) and have since then owned three of his Guitars. The "Thinline" was followed by a "ES-250" and this year (2006) he made me the fantastic "Blue Deco".
I will always remain a "Slaman player" since I am convinced that his instruments are some of the best sounding Jazzguitars you can own.
visit Daniel's website
Here's a comment I wrote after Daniel finished my new "Blue Deco":
With
finishing the "Blue Deco" Daniel Slaman has proven again his supreme
craftmanship and dedication to meet a players demand. From the first moment
we discussed the outline and details of my "Blue Deco" he has, as
always, shown an open mind to convert a couple of my "crazy" ideas
into in incredible beautiful and playable guitar.
Daniel built me a blond ES-250 two years ago and this instrument instantly
became my first choice in perfoming and recording.(it let my other Guitars
like my Guild Artist Award catch dust as a result).
I was totally satified with this instrument but still had some ideas about
a new guitar in the back of my head. I wanted to have an 18 inch, D'Angelico
inspired instrument with cutaway, and for a jazzguitar a bit unusual pickup
setup: a P90 and Humbucker from Wizzardpickups in England (www.wizardpickupsltd.com/
), together with an old OBL pickup I had lying around for years and a
RMC hexaphonic piezo pickup in the bridge to be able to add an acoustic touch
and midi option during recording or live performance.
The RMC I bought from Frank Krocker (frameworks-guitars.com),
who provided me with a great service in solving some technical details. I
wanted an instrument with the focus on a strong amplified sound without it
being that loud acoustically.
With playing Bebop I feel that a floating pickup on a mainly acoustic guitar
is difficult to cut through a rhythm section and works better for instance
in an invironment without or with very soft drums. For these occasions I have
my Guild AA anyway and I was really looking for an addition to my existing
instrument collection and not a copy of an existing one.
Daniel listened to all my ideas very well. I am fortunate that he knows my
other instruments and my playing very well. He came up with the design for
the "Blue Deco" a couple of weeks later in october 2005. The instrument
was finished on May 12th 2006.
To describe the result I can only use superlatives. Allthough the guitar is
only a couple of weeks old, it has become my first choice on the gigs I played
since then.
Daniel
created an instument with a soft, very balanced deep acoustic sound which
amplifies really well and funny enough, sounds really acoustic when amplified.The
action and feel of the instrument is like its looks: marvelous and very inspiring.
It is so easy to tune and stays in tune also incredibly, every note comes
out perfectly all over the fretboard.The guitar is a "Players Dream"
and I am so thankful for knowing Daniel and being able to design an instrument
like this. I had a lot of guitars in the past, including a couple of Gibsons
and I was so fortunate to be able to play Jim Halls "D'Aquisto"
on one occasion. I can only summarize that Daniel Slaman is a true artist
and ranks in my opinion among the very best Archtop makers.
Axel Hagen, May 2006
Around 2001 I was fortunate to meet and become aquainted with Henk Toorenvliet, the founder and executive Producer of the acclaimed Dutch Label "Blue Jack Jazz Records". Henk has since then produced 4 CD's with me and I am very proud to be part of this very special Jazz label, which represents a very high level of pure Jazzmusic. The quality and taste of his productions are impeccable. Henk has released an impressive number of Jazz CD's already which gained wide international recognition. His CD's are distributed all over the world and became collectors items. I am looking forward to the continuation of our co-operation.
Thank You Henk!!!
more Internet Links:
http://www.verweijpmsystems.nl/
http://www.archtop-germany.de/