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Stretton Payne Pro Series
The Stretton Payne Comfort Contour Pro Series brings all the features of a premium guitar to an accessible instrument for any player, whether you are a beginner guitarist or an experienced pro looking for great sound performance and a comfortable playing experience.
All of the details in the design of this Stretton Payne guitar have been designed to make it a joy to play, removing any barriers that get in the way, from how it feels to how it sounds down to how much it costs. The result is a guitar that feels natural and comfortable to pick up and play, sounding great from your first strum.
The built in contoured arm rest helps to increase the voice of the guitar, creating a clear tone and impeccable intonation. Players feel relaxed and at ease with the guitar which makes all the difference to the playing experience.
The Stretton Payne D1 Pro Series brings all the features of a premium guitar to an accessible instrument for any player, whether you are a beginner guitarist or an experienced pro looking for great sound performance and a comfortable playing experience.
This is a Dreadnought Guitar
The dreadnought is a type of acoustic guitar body that has become the most common size and shape for acoustic guitars. At the time of its creation in 1916 the word dreadnought referred to a large, all big-gun, modern battleship of the type pioneered by HMS Dreadnought in 1906. With a body much larger than most other guitars at the time, it provided the dreadnought with a bolder, richer, and often louder tone. It is distinguished by its size and square shoulders and bottom.
It has stood the test of time with its rich tone and versatility to become the most recognisable steel string acoustic guitar body shape in the world.
Key Features
The type of tonal wood used to build a guitar body is key to a great sounding instrument. The type of wood used in the neck, fretboard and bridge is also very important in producing a quality guitar that plays well. Here is a list of the carefully selected tonal woods we used to make this guitar with an explanation of the tonal properties you can expect from the guitar listed below.
Top: Spruce
Back and Sides: Sapele
Neck: Mahogany
Machine Heads: Diecast
Fret Material: Nickel
Fretboard Material: Purple Heart
Finish: Satin
Cutaway Body: No
Special Feature: Built in ergonomic arm rest
Creating a comfortable ergonomic playing position, the built in arm-rest promotes good playing posture with the contoured body design sitting typically where a player’s arm will rest.
Constructed from quality tonewoods, the guitar features a spruce top, saple back and sides and a mahogany neck, delivering a bright warm tone.
This full size guitar features a dreadnought body shape which equals volume and a wide, rich tone. The contoured body of the D1-Pro further enhances the sound performance of this dreadnought by promoting good playing posture and preventing muffling of the soundboard, creating a relaxed and comfortable playing experience.
The Stretton Payne D1 Pro Series brings all the features of a premium guitar to an accessible instrument for any player, whether you are a beginner guitarist or an experienced pro looking for great sound performance and a comfortable playing experience.
All of the details in the design of the D1 Pro have been designed to remove any barriers that get in the way, from how it feels to how it sounds down to how much it costs. The result is a guitar that feels natural and comfortable to pick up and play.
Spruce is generally regarded as the industry standard tone wood for guitar tops. It offers the widest depth of tone and character for every playing style. Spruce is a softwood and is generally considered more sustainable than hard woods because it has a faster growth and regeneration rate. It has a tight creamy white grain with good pliability that produces a broad dynamic range of sound. There are a number of species of spruce used in guitar construction and each offer slightly different characteristics.
The reason for spruces persistent popularity is its ability to produce bright responsive balanced tone.
Sapele is an African tonal wood that is closely related to Mahogany. It is widely used as an alternative to Mahogany as it shares many tonal properties but is considered more sustainable timber. It has a lightish red attractive grain and produces guitars with strong low to midrange tone and good top end definition. It delivers warm tones for strumming with the versatility of bright tone for lead finger picking styles.
Mahogany is a straight grained redish-brown wood that produces guitars with an impressive beauty and depth of sound. Its stunning colour produces beautiful natural finished guitars. It is widely used in quality guitar necks due to its straight grain, density and strength. When used in the guitar body it is characterised as having a warm, soft sound with pleasing resonance and balanced tone.
Purple Heart is a very hard, stiff and dense wood with a straight tight grain. It has become a popular choice for quality guitar fretboards and bridges due to its similar tonal properties to Rosewood but is a more sustainable choice. When freshly cut the timber is a deep purple colour and becomes a dark brown when exposed to UV light. The dense hard wearing character of Purple Heart make it a great choice for fretboards and guitar bridges as it transfers sound waves efficiently to the rest of the guitar.
Why this guitar is special. The D1-Pro has a built in contoured arm rest to make the guitar extra comfortable to play. It’s a cutting edge technique usually reserved for high end guitars due to the intricacies of building it in to the guitar body. At Stretton Payne we think this feature is a wonderful addition to the guitar and once you have played it for a while you will be left wondering why all acoustic guitars don’t have them.
What is a machine head? Simply put they are the component on a guitar used to adjust the string tension whilst also preventing the string from slipping. Once tensioned it’s important that the string is held in place without slipping to maintain accurate tuning.
There are a variety of machine heads to suit different budgets and they are an important component to consider when building quality guitars. They affect tuning accuracy and contribute to the stability of the guitars tuning.
Why we use Sealed (diecast) on this guitar. Sealed or Diecast machine heads are used mainly on quality mid to high end guitars. The internal mechanisms are sealed inside a diecast housing meaning the components are protected from the elements and will permanently retain its lubrication. The diecast housing keeps the gear mechanisms firmly in place making a more accurate string tensioner and holding the guitars tuning more stable. Diecast machine heads are long lasting, accurate, quality guitar components.
What is a Fret? Frets are the metal strips that run at regular intervals along the fretboard (finger board). The number of frets on a guitar neck vary depending on the type of guitar, typically a steel string acoustic guitar has 20 frets.
Fret wire or frets are an important component that will affect the guitars playability. The type of metal they are made from will have the biggest impact over all. The three main metals used for fret wire are brass (a gold colour), nickel and stainless steel (both a silver colour).
Brass is not as hard wearing as nickel and stainless steel. This makes it a good choice for nylon string guitars but not so good for steel string acoustic guitars. Nickel is a better choice for quality steel string guitars because it is considered corrosion resistant and hard wearing. Stainless steel is a less common choice as it tends to have a more rigid structure which makes it harder to work with but is most resistant to corrosion.
What is a truss rod and do all guitars have them? Guitar necks are prone to bending from changes in temperature, humidity, atmospheric pressure and tension from the guitar strings. Quality guitars have a truss rod inserted under the fretboard that runs the length of the guitar neck. A truss rod is a metal rod that can be tightened or loosened to control the bend in a guitar neck. Not all guitars have them but it’s an important component to consider when building quality guitars.
At Stretton Payne we use dual action truss rods which is a modern design that can be tightened in both directions, warping the neck in either direction. The truss rod is accessed on an acoustic guitar using an allen/hex key inside the sound hole.
A truss rod allows small adjustments to the neck position, also known as the guitars action, making the strings either closer or further away from the fretboard. Having a quality guitar with a good dual action truss rod will help set the guitar neck perfectly.
Stretton Payne are a proudly British company who have been making quality musical instruments for over 20 years.
We have a strong commitment to producing instruments that have a positive impact on our environment and so in addition to sourcing sustainable woods in the construction of our instruments, Stretton Payne own 50 acres of woodlands in the UK, which are protected and managed by the company, with the sole purpose of absorbing more carbon than is produced from the production and transportation of their instruments.
