About the Builder:
Rick Turner is an American builder of guitars and basses. He has earned many names during his long career. He is considered as being the co-founder of the first boutique guitar builder. Alembic was founded in 1970 and he was involved in the design and construction of the Alembic instruments. He moved on to found Rick Turner Guitars in 1979 and joined Gibson in 1988 where he served as president of Gibson Labs West Coast R&D Division.
After leaving Gibson Gibson in 1992 he began different ventures and at present he is building his guitars under the Renaissance Guitar name. During theses years he developed piezo pickup designs, working with Jackson Browne, David Crosby and others. One of his famous guitar designs The Model 1 was developed for Fleetwood Mac guitarist Lindsey Buckingham, who continues to use the Model 1 to this day.
He is still very active in developing new ideas. Read more: http://www.renaissanceguitars.com/
About the Guitar:
The Compass Rose is a design Rick Turner developed to realize his own ideas and to differentiate from the construction pattern of other acoustic guitar builders. Inspired by a huge 18-inch guitar design developed in the 1890s by Orville Gibson he reduced it so his guitars measure a more manageable 15 or 16 inches across the lower bout. He also used a top-bracing pattern that melds the X pattern developed by Martin in the 1840s with the fan braces pioneered by Torres in the 1850s. Turner’s bridge design recalls the sort of thing that might have turned up on an 1820s Parisian guitar or maybe a Maurer from the 1930s.
The most unusual features of the Compass Rose is however the neck attachment, which was inspired by the Howe-Orme instruments of the early 1900s, and the “flying buttress” neck support.
Read more on the instrument's conception and building:
http://www.renaissanceguitars.com/pdf/05_FJ10_Turner_all.pdf
This guitar was used by Ted Nugent in 2008 in a guitar clinic organised in Las Vegas.
This rare instrument has a great sound and shows an extremely high standard of guitar building.
