Around 1998 I was fortunate to meet and become friends with acclaimed dutch Archtop builder Daniel Slaman (slamanguitars.com).
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
