Nice find P_K... you done good.

Good going Martin--we don't want Alistair just laying around, resting on his laurels.  And each model should have an N counterpart, something like the X10N nylon string guitar. 

Now there is a blast from the past. Where did you find that.
The X20 will be a dread but a dread with the Emerald twist. There is no use in me burying my head in the sand customers like the dread.
I have learned alot on this trip and the X20 is in pretty clear focus.
Feel free to discuss how I should build it and what it should achieve but don't expect to hear too much from me about it at the moment. Iwant you to know it's on the way but alot of things have to be gone through after NAMM and we are going to be busy with alot of new orders.
Well done paper kitten on your find

really, i only googled "emerald x20". it was very easy to find. i also found a lot of info about the past of emerald googling a little bit more. very interesting and moving!

i can really say that i appreciated a fast and amazing improvement on Alistair guitars through the years. keeping on doing like that, i wonder what emerald guitars will be in a near future.

i also wonder if Alistair is going to do some little modifications on his models after this travel's feedback.

so, you asked! now here it starts the emerald x20 dread discussion thread! set, ready, GO!!!!!

The dread sound is about top-board bracing, which at this point in the CF revolution seems antithetic to most manufacturers.  Get the dread sound "right" without busting the bank, and Emerald could really get a popularity boost.

Dang it!. Last night I went to bet thinking, "Yippee! Finally time to start saving for that new Emerald OM." This morning, it is a dread. 

Oh well, first the X7, and now this; kudos to Alistair for listening to his customers. Unfortunately, those customers are clamoring for Parlors and Dreads. Oh well.

Buzzard does raise a good point though. Who knows what an X10 or X7 or X30 is supposed to sound like? So, there's more room for unique character. A dread, though, carries definite expectations of what it "should" sound like. To some extent, this may even mean the need to copy the typical dread deficiencies and/or design elements, including bracing.

I wonder if the dread market, outside of this forum, will be as open to an "Emerald twist".

A lot of people do like dreads - but I wonder just how popular they really are?  What percentage of Taylors sold are dread body styles?  For that matter, if you think about CA, the Legacy may have got them started, but at the end most of the excitement was about the smaller guitars.

According to "Martin Guitars: A History", their D size guitars (dreads) account for 80% of yearly production.

I remember seeing something like that too - but then people tend to equate Martin with dreads.  That's why I wonder more about newer manufacturers such as Taylor, and what their breakdown is.  You almost never see a Taylor dread in the store, so I'm sure their dread sales must be fairly small by comparison - and it doesn't seem to hurt them. 

Martin sells something like 80,000 a year, while Taylor sells something like 40,000.  Does anyone have sales figures for CA (when they were in business of course), Blackbird, or Rainsong?

I understand why any guitar company  makes dreads, but that market seems so dominated by the Martins and others it does not seem like the right niche for a carbon guitar maker.  Increasingly there are some really nice inexpensive dreads coming from the likes of China, Vietnam, and Korea, The Godin companies in Canada make nice dreads and modestly priced for a reasonably high quality product. On the carbon fiber side of things you have Rainsong making a full range of dreads and jumbos in what I will call pure carbon and their hybrids. Given the quality of Rainsong carbon guitars, their history, etc,  I suggest that is some really tough competitiion.

For all those reasons and more, I tend to agreee with Steve when he say most of our excitement has been with the small body guitars.

My two pennies worth  is to consider the sound and work on engineering it  to match that to which people say they like. Getting as much of that dread sound as possible from a small body guitar seems like the holy grail of carbon guitar building