MG-5.0 XP Acoustic Guitar (c.2005)

McPherson Guitars builds in Sparta, Wisconsin, where Matt McPherson (also the founder and CEO of Mathews Archery, headquartered in the same town) began chasing a revolutionary acoustic design in the late 1990s. The shop has produced heirloom-quality wooden flat-tops in limited numbers since 2001, hand-built by a small team of luthiers, and more recently has extended the same design principles to a carbon-fiber line that's earned its own following. Tonewood Atlas tracks the wood-body MG , Camrielle, and Custom lines at McPherson's upper tiers — the part of the catalog where individual top and back/sides selection and high-tier construction define each build. The signature design language carries across the wood line: an offset asymmetrical soundhole, a cantilevered neck that lets the top vibrate without the fretboard extension damping it, and a built-in LR Baggs system tuned for amplified performance that stays close to the instrument's natural voice. The carbon-fiber Sable and Touring models sit outside our boutique-acoustic scope by design; if those interest you, McPherson's own site is the right starting point.