As I have mentioned before, one of my local music stores is Gryphon Stringed Instruments in nearby Palo Alto.  I love Gryphon for many reasons including the fact that the guy who literally wrote the book on Martin guitars, Richard Johnston, is the co-owner.  I have purchased 3 guitars there and I’m confident I am far from through.  Gryphon carries a wide variety of high-end acoustic guitars including guitars by Martin, Taylor, Santa Cruz, Collings and Huss & Dalton.  However, in the front of the store are usually a number of Blueridge Guitars.  Blueridge?  I hadn’t heard of Blueridge.  Are they comparable to Martin Guitars?  What’s the story here?

It turns out that Blueridge manufactures their guitars very close to the specifications of vintage Martin guitars and ultimately creates a very high quality instrument.  In the words of Eric Schoenberg of Schoenberg Guitars, “These are phenomenal values, with tone unheard of at these price levels.”  From what we have seen in our tests, we agree.  Blueridge then sells them at a much lower price than comparable Martin guitars.  How do they do it?  There are two major factors that allow them to do this.

1.  They aren’t Martins and don’t have to keep the price high to maintain the value of the brand. This isn’t a knock on the Martin brand.  I love the Martin brand, but those beautiful guitars are pricey in part because of the brand.  Similarly constructed guitars by other brands are usually cheaper.

2.  Despite their very American sounding name, these guitars are manufactured in China. Considering the amount of labor involved in making a guitar, it isn’t surprising that more manufacturing of these instruments is moving offshore where these instruments can be manufactured more economically - allowing a lot of this savings to be passed on to you, our reader.

In case you’d like to try a cheaper Blueridge alternative to the Martin you have been looking at, we have created a list of the 5 great Blueridge alternatives to Martins. And when we mean equivalent, we mean that the guitar is the same shape and uses the same wood and finish for the top, back and sides with similar (but not always the same) bracing.

The only big drawback of the Blueridges - as far as we can tell - is you’ll have to get comfortable with what has to be the goofiest looking pickgurard we have seen.

And the final thing to love about Blueridge guitars is that one of the Tuttle Kids plays one: