Cole Clark AN2EC-MMAHR All Mahogany Rosewood Acoustic Guitar

The Cole Clark AN2EC-MMAHR is the Angel 2 Grand Auditorium built entirely from solid Honduran mahogany — AA-grade top, back and sides, with a rosewood fretboard and bridge — in Cole Clark's Bayswater workshop on the eastern edge of Melbourne. It is the Touring Series recipe at its most direct: a carved, all-solid body with a cutaway, a Spanish-heel neck that runs on into the body, and the PG3 pickup system built in during production rather than fitted afterwards. It travels in a tweed Cole Clark hardcase.

Solid mahogany on every surface

Top, back and sides are all solid, AA-grade Honduran mahogany, grown on plantation in Fiji rather than cut from its endangered native forests. Mahogany on the face gives a drier, more even response than a spruce or bunya top, with the midrange stepping forward and none of the low-end swell you get from rosewood underneath. Chords stay separated when you dig in, fingerpicked lines come out woody and direct, and the whole guitar opens up further as the timber settles in. Under a natural satin nitrocellulose finish, the straight grain and dark timber binding look every bit as understated as they sound. Grain varies from guitar to guitar, so no two are quite alike.

Carved inside, braced for the stage

Cole Clark's Touring Series bodies are carved on the inside: the top and back start thick through the centre and thin out towards the edges, so the timber flexes where it should and stays stiff where it shouldn't. Underneath, a double-V bracing pattern with a small X between the braces holds the mahogany top together without choking it, and the soundhole is cut a little larger than usual to trim the boomy bottom end that fights an amplified acoustic. The payoff is a Grand Auditorium that stays balanced played acoustically and is unusually feedback-resistant once you plug in, with a mid-sized body that sits comfortably on the knee and a cutaway that leaves the upper frets open.

Spanish heel: one neck, straight through the body

Every Cole Clark uses Spanish-heel construction, the method classical builders have relied on for centuries. Instead of a dovetail or bolt-on joint, the neck timber continues through the heel and into the body, almost to the soundhole, with the sides let into slots in the neck and the top and back glued directly to it. The instrument behaves like a single piece of wood: notes sustain longer, the guitar plays louder up the neck than an attached-neck design, and the joint is designed never to need resetting. The 25.5-inch scale, 44 mm Graph Tech Tusq nut and 12-inch fretboard radius give it a modern, slightly wide feel that suits fingerstyle and flatpicking alike, and the rosewood fretboard carries abalone dot markers.

PG3 True Acoustic pickup: three sensors, one honest sound

Cole Clark designs the pickup first and the guitar around it, and the PG3 is the result. Six individual piezo elements sit suspended under the saddle and handle the bass, a patented face sensor mounted to the top takes over the midrange above the crossover point, and a small condenser microphone inside the body adds the very top end that piezos miss. Because each element only hears the frequencies it is suited to, the familiar piezo quack is gone and feedback stays under control at gig volume. The side-mounted preamp keeps it simple: a master volume, a blend control that dials the face sensor in against the piezo, and a separate level for the microphone. Through a PA or an acoustic amp, it sounds like the guitar in the room, only louder.

Plek'd, cased and ready to play

Before it leaves the factory, every Cole Clark goes through the Plek machine, which measures each fret under full string tension and cuts the fret tops and nut slots to a repeatable precision hand work can't match, so the action is low and even from the first fret to the cutaway. Gold Grover machine heads hold tuning, a Graph Tech Tusq saddle sits in the rosewood bridge, and D'Addario XS coated phosphor bronze 12–53s come fitted. A pickguard is supplied loose in the case so you can choose the clean look or the protected one, and the guitar ships in Cole Clark's tweed hardcase. Set up in-store by Guitar World Australia's techs before it ships to you, so it plays perfectly the moment it arrives.