Circa Guitars
00-17 Custom,
Listed at CR Guitars · Rhinebeck, NY · Dealer ref #253
Tracked on Tonewood Atlas — view the full listing at CR Guitars’ site.
Photos hot-linked from CR Guitars’ site — never rehosted.
Specs
- Top
- Honduran Mahogany
- Back / Sides
- Honduran Mahogany
- Neck
- Honduran Mahogany
- Fingerboard
- Ebony
- Body shape
- 00
- Scale length
- 25"
- Nut width
- 1 23/32"
- Frets to body
- 12
- Strings
- 6
- Cutaway
- No
- Condition
- New
Circa Guitars
John Slobod builds vintage-inspired flat-tops in South Portland, Maine, under the name Circa Guitars — a one-person shop devoted to the pre-war Martin tradition. He learned the craft at Canada's Timeless Instruments in 1993, then spent years at Dana Bourgeois's Pantheon Guitars carving necks and doing the final voicing on close to four thousand guitars before launching his own line in 1998. Circa's instruments follow pre-war Martin conventions — 0, 00, 000, OM, and dreadnought shapes in 12- and 14-fret configurations — built one at a time from traditional materials and methods. Slobod works closely with each client to dial in the voice and feel of the guitar, and his work is sought out by some of the finest fingerstyle players around.
CR Guitars
CR Guitars is a by-appointment showroom in Rhinebeck, New York, in the Hudson Valley a couple of hours north of the city, run by career guitarist Craig Snyder with Renée Snyder. Snyder spent decades as a session and touring player and as an R&D collaborator whose ear builders sought out for design input — and CR grew directly out of that. Rather than stock a broad catalog, he works with a small circle of makers he knows personally, often ordering instruments to his own exacting spec. The acoustic roster runs to elite, low-production luthiers — Manzer, Matsuda, Kostal, Greenfield, Kraut, Marchione, and Jang alongside Lowden and Collings. Inventory is small and may turn quickly; this is a curated salon, not a catalog floor.
