Pratley Classic D-SCE-BWBW All Blackwood Dreadnought Cutaway Acoustic-Electric Guitar

The Pratley Classic D-SCE-BWBW is a cutaway dreadnought made from solid Australian blackwood on the top, back and sides, handmade on the Gold Coast. It has a Queensland maple silkwood neck, an AA-grade Johnstone River teak fretboard and bridge, and an L.R. Baggs StagePro Element pickup system. A Pratley moulded hard-foam case is included.

A big body in solid blackwood

At 510 mm long, 400 mm wide and 117 mm deep, this is the full-size Pratley dreadnought: plenty of air for strumming, driving a rhythm part and filling a room unplugged. Using blackwood on the top instead of spruce gives the big body a rounder, warmer voice with a strong midrange. Hard strumming stays clear rather than turning to mush, and single-note lines have some bite. The satin nitrocellulose finish shows off every stripe and ripple in the blackwood grain, and no two guitars are figured alike.

Bracing that handles the humidity

Martin Pratley came to guitar building through industrial design, and his dipole bracing layout shows it. Cut from quarter-sawn Queensland bunya, it is designed to stop the top rolling forward behind the bridge while still letting the body move freely. Combined with a 4.5 m radius domed back and laser-cut kerf linings, it produces a guitar built to cope with Australian conditions, from a humid Gold Coast January to an air-conditioned venue.

Neck joint and headstock

The Queensland maple silkwood neck is set into a tapered solid-timber pocket that locks it in like a dovetail, joining the body at the 14th fret. A two-way truss rod and twin torsion bars run from end to end of the neck and through the join, which keeps relief even from the first fret to the last. Pratley does away with the Spanish-style heel to save weight and make the dusty end easier to reach through the cutaway. The fretboard extension floats just above the top, and a scarf joint sets the headstock angle for firm pressure on the 44 mm Graph Tech nut.

Johnstone River teak and the finishing touches

The fretboard and bridge are AA-grade Johnstone River teak, a Queensland hardwood with the density and natural oil of Indian rosewood. It carries 20 Jescar 18% nickel-silver frets on a 25.5" scale with 1/4" white mother-of-pearl dots. A blackwood headstock cap with the white Pratley logo, an eight-piece radial-grain solid-timber rosette, black ABS binding, a black pickguard and black 16:1 Pratley tuners built by Gotoh round it out. The saddle and bridge pins are Graph Tech as well.

Stage-ready with L.R. Baggs

The L.R. Baggs StagePro Element pairs the Element under-saddle pickup with a side-mounted preamp. The controls are a volume slider, bass, mid and treble sliders, a notch filter, a phase switch, an onboard tuner and a low-battery light. That covers everything you need to dial in a PA or acoustic amp and chase down feedback quickly. It comes strung with Elixir Phosphor Bronze Nanoweb 12-53s. Set up in-store by Guitar World Australia's techs before it ships to you, so it plays perfectly the moment it arrives.