My friend David was recently in the market for a new acoustic guitar, and Babicz guitars ended up on his radar. I’d never heard of Babicz guitars before hearing about them from David, but they have received quite a few good reviews, such as the Guitar One Mark of Excellence and the Guitar World Gold Award. Upon further looking into the history the guitars, I found out that Jeff Babicz used to work for Steinberger guitars in the 1980s.
One of the more interesting features of acoustic Babicz guitars are that the neck height is adjustable, pretty much on-the-fly. For example, you can go from a low-action configuration to a high-action configuration within seconds. Another interesting feature is the torque reducing split bridge, which is also adjustable. As a result of this bridge, the strings are stretched out across the base of the top, which reduces the tension on the neck and allows for a thinner soundboard.
I had a chance to play the guitar, and it felt and played very comfortably. One interesting aspect of the top configuration is that you can feel much more of the vibration from the strings than a typical acoustic guitar. Physically adjusting the neck is very simple and the results are instantaneous. It’s very easy to adjust the intonation so that you can get an optimal configuration in a matter of minutes. Additionally, the guitar contained very good components and looked to be very well made.
Several well-known guitarists use Babicz guitars, including Robert Randolph, Adrian Belew, Pat Travers and Todd Rundgren. You can view some videos of the guitars on the Babicz Web site.
Nice post. I really like those two features – the adjustable action and bridge. I wish they had a dealer closer to me so I could check them out. Very unique.
Yeah, there’s not many dealers near me that carry them, either. My friend David took a chance and ordered it off of eBay, for a great deal, and it turned out to be a really nice guitar.