Preston Thompson Guitars
2024 Preston Thompson D B/A Brazilian Rosewood/Adirondack
2024 · Listed at The Fretted Buffalo · Buffalo, NY
Tracked on Tonewood Atlas — view the full listing at The Fretted Buffalo’s site.
Photos hot-linked from The Fretted Buffalo’s site — never rehosted.
Specs
- Top
- Adirondack Spruce
- Back / Sides
- Brazilian Rosewood
- Fingerboard
- Ebony
- Body shape
- Dreadnought
- Nut width
- 1 3/4"
- Frets to body
- 14
- Strings
- 6
- Cutaway
- No
- Condition
- Preowned
- Year
- 2024
Preston Thompson Guitars
Preston Thompson Guitars build handmade flattops in Sisters, Oregon — the shop Preston Thompson founded after decades studying pre-war Martin construction. Preston came up under Charles Fox at his Vermont guitar school in the 1970s and then through Randy Wood's Old Time Pickin' Parlor in Nashville, but his defining education was the years he spent with bluegrass great Charles Sawtelle measuring his collection of pre-war Martin dreadnoughts — measurements that still drive the shop's bracing patterns and top graduations today. The instruments were chosen as winner's prize at the National Flatpicking Championships three years running, and players including Eric Bibb and Sawtelle himself put them on records. Preston passed away in 2019, and the team he had spent years training continued the work in the same Sisters shop using the same methods and the same hands.
The Fretted Buffalo
The Fretted Buffalo is an online-first dealer based near Buffalo, New York, working from a deliberately small, curated catalog rather than a sprawling floor — instruments chosen, in the shop's words, for tone, craftsmanship, and individuality. Most of their guitars ship across the country, so the business is built around earning a distance buyer's trust: detailed descriptions, professional photography, and demonstration videos on each listing, backed by a seven-day approval period and free insured shipping within the continental US. The boutique acoustic shelf leans into the modern fingerstyle and flatpicking names — Bourgeois (and its Touchstone line), Huss & Dalton, Lowden, Furch, Atkin, and Boucher — alongside Gallagher, Hozen, Avenir, McIlroy, and McNally, with the occasional used Martin or Preston Thompson rounding out the catalog. A small, carefully chosen collection with the online presentation to match.