Breedlove Guitars are something special.
As a company, Breedlove are very in touch with the effects of using a natural material like wood, European Spruce and African Mahogany in this case, and you can feel it in their builds as well as their energy as a guitar manufacturer. This is especially obvious in their ECO Collection, where guitars are built with sustainably-sourced exotic and native tonewoods, with no clear-cut trees. No clear-cut wood is used in any new Breedlove guitar Breedlove EcoTonewood in their commitment to respect and appreciate the materials they’re using. It’s where music meets the trees after all!
Being concert-sized, the Breedlove Discovery S Concert Edgeburst CE offers a crisp, balanced response. It’s a big enough body to project, with presence and weight, but without the mud sometimes present in a larger-bodied acoustic guitar.
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The Breedlove Discovery is comprised of a European Spruce top and an African Mahogany back and sides, the neck also being constructed from African Mahogany. The fretboard and bridge are Ovangkol, providing a nice, natural wood grain to the Edgeburst finish on the top. This is an amber, three-tone burst, warm yellow hues bursting from the soundhole that evolve to dark brown around the body’s edge, which is capped off with crisp binding for a refined look overall. The Ovangkol bridge is Breedlove’s own pinless bridge design, alleviating both the need to wrestle with bridge pins to hold the strings in place, as well as allowing the strings to resonate more directly into the guitar’s woods, rather than all that beautiful acoustic energy fizzling out into the pins.
Fishman Presys 1
The Discovery S Concert Edgeburst CE features 20 frets, the cutaway providing unique access to the tippity-top frets, the scale length of 25.3” feeling familiar to both electric and acoustic players, as well as providing good tension across multiple alternate tunings. The Discovery S Concert Edgeburst CE features a Fishman Presys I pickup system featuring an on board tuner and some simple tone controls. A bright, backlit tuner will have you able to tune both inside on a dark stage, or outside in the sun. A phase switch allows you to flip the polarity of the pickup system at the guitar stage itself, rather than leaving it up to an FOH engineer or at the preamp stage when recording. This is especially handy for self recording, as once you’re set up you don’t want to be jumping up to toggle a preamp’s polarity switch on and off! A single ‘Contour’ control allows you to leave the guitar reasonably natural and open, while dialling in more contour scooped the guitar’s output, super handy for fitting into a dense mix or making way for your own vocal!
Straight out of the case, the Discovery is a pleasure to play. Well set up from the factory, in tune and comfortable, the tonality of the choice of tonewoods and body shape really make this guitar sing! While I’d love to spruik how much I took note of all the specs, additions and build quality while playing, the truth is that what I loved most about the Discovery S Concert Edgeburst CE is that nothing got in my way at all. The cutaway is so well built that I could easily access every fret without thinking about its design, the neck shape, scale length and finish had me easily fretting both chords and more articulate leads. The body shape, while conventionally concert-shaped, also felt comfortable and entirely out of my way, the body resonating into me and summing to a beautiful sound overall.
The Fishman Presys I pickup is so good in fact, that in general it simply feels like the acoustic sound of the guitar is amplified. While this might seem like it should be the standard for acoustic guitar pickups; guitar players and the sound engineers that mix them will agree; it’s not always par for the course. Acoustic guitar pickups can generally sound lifeless, or brittle, or a bit of both, and they lack the resonance and liveliness of the acoustic sound of the guitar itself. The Presys manages to capture all of this, with options to shape it as much or little as you’d like, and amplify the Discovery S Concert Edgeburst CE as much as you might need.
The Breedlove Discovery S Concert Edgeburst CE is, at its core, a great guitar. Not only is it well constructed with carefully chosen tonewoods that sound great, but it’s all sustainably sourced as part of Breedlove’s commitment to leaving as little impact on the Earth and environment as they can, and the proof is in the pudding. While the concert shape is a standard amongst acoustic guitars, Breedlove’s Discovery S Concert takes this a step further, pairing a refined design of the best woods to specific targets to make an overall balanced, lively and present acoustic guitar. Aesthetically, the finish of the Discover S Concert borrows from both nature and famous designs, the Edgeburst reminding us of vintage parlour guitars and early electric designs, while the natural wood grain of the Ovangkol fretboard and bridge remind us that the guitar is built from natural materials.
Build aside, the Fishman pickup system is a great addition, capturing nuance that a lot of acoustic guitars swing for and miss, the Presys 1 however, is absolutely a home run. Every part of the Discover S Concert is built to be played, to allow the player to focus on the great sound, without any hurdles or design elements that get in the way. The Discovery S Concert is about removing obstacles, and they’ve done it remarkably well. It’s inspiring, refreshing and a relief that I’m playing something that’s sourced, built and produced in a sustainable way, both for me and the environment.
For local Breedlove enquiries, visit Amber Technology.
