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1990 Santa Cruz Tony Rice Professional
This particular Tony Rice Professional Model dates from 1990 and bears Tony’s signature on the serial number label inside the guitar. It features a German spruce top with scalloped Sitka bracing and old growth Brazilian rosewood back and sides, herringbone trim and the enlarged soundhole and blank headstock and fretboard that are distinctive to this model. The Tony Rice Pro Model is designed to offer better bass-to-treble balance than a standard dreadnought, making it perfect for Tony’s style of melodic flat picking.
This example sounds wonderful. It’s perfectly balanced, open, dynamic, powerful, and full. It does exactly what it’s designed to do and is a shop favourite.
The guitar presents beautifully and plays perfectly thanks to a fresh neck reset and recently dressed frets by our shop. We’ve refinished the guitar’s back and buffed out the original side finish to correct older imperfect repairs. There are a pair of minor side cracks at the neck heel that remain visible and there remains minor finish delamination on the bottom of the heel from a previous reset. The guitar’s top is perfect and crack free, and the bridge and bridge plate are factory original. The tone woods are incredible, with gorgeous grain and color, and more importantly, wonderful tone. The guitar’s original top finish shows crazing and a few small dings but very little playwear. The original neck finish is comparably clean.
The neck has a soft V carve with and a fast feel; the nut measures 1-11/16”, and scale is 25.4”. Neck depth is .784” at the 1st fret and .850” at the 9th. String spread at the bridge is 2-3/16”. We have set the guitar up with 12-54 strings and an action of 5-6 64ths.
There is no pickup in the guitar any longer, but the output jack remains in place as a strap-button. A strap button has been installed in the neck heel as well.
With hardshell case
