Breedlove Premier Brazilian Companion

Blue Diamond

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Blue Diamond

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This guitar is a limited release by Breedlove and is one of the first companions to be part of the Made In Bend collection.

So first, the companion body shape, what is it? Well, it is small, but not a travel guitar. It’s small enough that if you need to get it out of the way quickly you can, but sounds big and has an impressive tone. It’s a great “dad guitar” for that reason. You can thumb it in the backyard and when you need to block little jimmy from taking a header into your weber grill, you can put it down quickly.

Build Details

Breedlove’s commitment to the details is showcased in the “Whale Tail” seen here. A flamed maple strip splays out and is outlined in black and white fiber binding.

Set against the traditional Brazilian Rosewood body, this feature helps bring together the guitar.

Gold pin and whale tale on Breedlove Brazilian

The body

on this guitar is brazilian rosewood. Brazilian is considered the gold standard of tone woods. Basically it became illegal to harvest in 1967 and an endangered species in 1992 so there’s not much of it around. It just so happens Breedlove has the largest stock of legal brazilian tone woods in the world.

Breedlove provides all the necessary paperwork for travel with brazilian rosewood so if you’re going on tour, or vacation, you can take this axe with you. Along with that, Breedlove provides a guitar portrait which has all the little details of guitar. It’s a nice touch that shows the care put into each instrument.

Soundwise, I find brazilian to be super punchy, like indian rosewood with a good eq and loudness button on.

Brazilian Rosewood Breedlove companion guitar

Binding, Purfling & Sap Wood

Here we can see flamed maple binding and fiber purfling. This ties in perfect to the “Whale Tail”.

On the back, we see the perfectly book matched Brazilian Rosewood, with this stunning strip of sap wood showcased.

The Brazilian Companion features figure maple binding and double black fiber purfling which sits nicely against the natural red cedar top.

Red cedar is physically lighter than spruce, and therefore more resonant. It also features a very straight grain.

The bracing

is a hand tuned, sound optimized, x bracing. What does that mean? Breedlove measures the resonant frequency of the top of each Made In Bend instrument and then hand chisels and sands the bracing down to the desired frequency. It’s a true art and something I have seen in person. I have also tried to do myself.

Of course, there is a pinless ebony bridge. The reason you want a pinless bridge is you eliminate the need to drill 6 more holes in the top of the guitar which allows for thinner, more resonant tops. Also there is a shallower break angle to the string, which also increases resonance by reducing pull on the top of the guitar. Plus string changes are easier, and I find the bridge more comfortable to play.

Every element we have touched on is created by hand. There is no cc and machines or any robots involved in these processes. However, Breedlove does have a couple machines for necks and fingerboards but that is it.

Rosette & Body Shape

The rosette on this guitar echoes the styling and wood types used for the binding, with one change. Breedlove chose to use spalted maple instead of flamed maple due to the high amount of figuring in a small area.

The body is Breedlove’s Companion shape, this guitar sounds MUCH bigger than it looks!

So let’s talk about the neck.

The neck heel which has a figured maple cap and gold pin into the honduran mahogany neck. The fingerboard is ebony and features mother of pearl interlocking diamond inlays, 23.5″ scale length and 1.68 nut width.

The back of the neck is satin and that flows up to the Asymmetrical headstock. The Asymmetrical headstock was designed to reduce break angles and allow the string to flow directly through the nut.

Case & Paperwork

The case is a nice upgrade from the typical Breedlove Made In Bend offering. An upgraded Armitage case is provided along with all the paperwork to travel with this guitar.

Brazilian Rosewood is treated the same as African Ivory, so Brazilain buyers are urged to do their due diligence to ensure you are traveling legally with your guitar and buying ethically.

Topping off the build is the Gotoh 510 tuners and this killer case.

So how does this guitar sound? In the words of Kenny Bergle, HUGE. While it can gently sing if you thumb away, I am more of “beater of guitars” and it fits my playing style pretty well. It’s a very dynamic, punchy guitar. The sample I have, likes to go from a low roar to a nicely compressed hard strum.

The pick ups system is a lr baggs eas vtc.

Now onto some sound samples from my home studio. This is me just messing around. Enjoy.

Buy Breedlove Brazilian Companion