The Rival

The Rival

Welcome home. For a band of gypsies like Northfield, this really isn’t a departure at all, this is a reunion. We all play guitar—always have and always will. We collect them, we perform with them, we’ve built them for years. Now with our first-ever public offering, we honor them. Our influences are varied, however, our love of the instrument is deep and rooted in experience—personal and professional. 

It would take too many web pages to explain why we did this—so let’s get straight to what we did. The very first time we strummed chords on our newly designed Archtop Octave mandolin, back in 2015, we heard the potential. This uniquely-small body, with complex arching, tone bars, and flat back was something altogether different, from its origin story found in those 000-sized Archtops, made in Nazareth in the 1930s. Everything that we changed to make it more focused-sounding and more comfortable, yielded a remarkably efficient acoustic chamber. The responsiveness was instant, the sustain rang out long enough for a daydream. We all smiled and we all unanimously said two things: 

“This is going to be the coolest octave mandolin available” 

AND 

“Damn this would probably make an amazing little guitar” 

Price: From $5,295

Eight years later, and after making some, 100+ octave mandolins, (while meeting hundreds of avid players and artists all over the world as a result of that adventure) we’ve gone back to find out if our mutual impulses we’re correct. 

Indeed, they were. Just enough guts to produce a big sound with the elegance to accommodate the comfort we all strive for in an instrument. Your right arm doesn’t have to contort just get around the “box”, your left hand (and arm) benefits from a shorter scale (24”) with access up the neck and over the fingerboard extension, with a mandolinist’s preferred neck joint (15th fret) for an altogether beautiful assembly of an old friend, made anew. And because we can—with our understanding of the lineage of aesthetics, how mandolin color shades and bursts helped to define the ultimate presentation of the North American Archtop Guitar—this guitar looks like something we all long for. Hear it with your eyes one time, we’re okay with that. 

Offered in two setup styles, we’re playing with all the inspiration we have. 

- Acoustic: growl ala Django meets Texas and takes the A Train to NYC. 

Or 

- Electric: outfitted with a super thin humbucking magnetic pickup and nickel wound strings. Bop. Blues. Ethereal. Add some drums and “..fly right” out of town.

Just have a look and listen to the demos and you’ll understand what we mean.

“Yeah man” It’s good to be home.  

Specs

Photos