Oh, and you even have that nifty travel guitar that accompanies you on vacations.

Sometimes. Okay, that one time.

What your impressive array may well be missing is the diamond in the rough known as a parlor guitar.

Indeed, while it may be less widely played today, until around 1870, the compact, narrow-waisted, gently articulate parlor guitar was the only game in town, generally thought of as a womans instrument meant to be played in parlors and salons, where it wouldnt have to compete with other instruments for volume, and where it made a proportional complement to the female voice.

While dreadnoughts and other larger guitars would eventually rule the roost, smaller-bodied guitars like OMs and OOs are increasingly bothering the guitar market again, and recent parlor models by Breedlove, Collings, Ibanez, Lowden, Taylor, and other makers have quickly become up-and-coming stars of their product lines.

The butterbean buttons on the vintage-style tuners are a high-flying touch, too.

The wide and fat mahogany neck, a popular shape on many PRS electric models, feels satiny and balanced with a 1.69-inch bone nut and at a 24.72-inch scale length.

Nevertheless, at just 19 inches long and 14 inches wide at the lower bout, the P20E certainly feels compact on the lap.) Do make sure your nails are properly filed, and perhaps consider a heavier pick than you normally use when you begin to play the Tonare.

This is not a guitar you go to for those zingy high-end strumming partswhere you point a C-mic at the 14th-fret neck jointand its no booming balladeers acoustic ammo machine, either.

Instead, the Tonare Parlor is all about articulation and finesse, though it wont mind if you give it a good smack now and again.

Which is to say, this is a midrange-focused instrument, which happily reveals both its velvety, firm character with strong fingerstyle playing, and its presence and rounded punch with a flatpick over 1.00mm.

Whats more, because all of the bodys efforts (distributed through PRSs hybrid Xclassical bracing) are directed at low- to high-mids, youll get an aggressive bite when you strike the strings with requisite force.

Plugged into a Fender Acoustasonic amplifier, as well as a Fender Hot Rod Deville 410, the Tonare not only displayed plenty of low-end character, but that character came minus the kind of 200500Hz frequency feedback that often drives electrified dreadnought players into the madhouse (probably in a straitjacket that features an X-bracing).

The woomph effect.

On a parlor. And no endlessly scanning the amps feedback notch to identify the guilty Hertz.

Cor-Tek, for those unaware, is the official name of the Cort guitar company, with plants in Seoul, South Korea, China, and Indonesia.

SPECS BODY Solid mahogany top with PRS hybrid Xclassical bracing; laminated mahogany back and sides; ebony bridge Get stories like this in your inbox.

This article originally appeared in the JanuaryFebruary 2021 issue of Acoustic Guitar magazine.

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