The only acoustic I own, and it's not going anywhere. I bought this in the early to mid 80's from what was then my girlfriend's dad. It was a particularly difficult time in my life and in a fit of depression gave it back to him along with an Ovation I owned at the time. I guess he saw what was going on because after I had pulled out of it he returned them to me. Why must Youth and Wisdom be antonyms?

Over the years it developed a bit of a pot belly and the day came when I had to do something about it. I was not looking forward to pulling and re-shaping/gluing braces as the guitar is never the same afterwards. For those of you who have played one of these ply-top Japanese Alvies there's no need to describe how good they sound for the price. One day I was thumbing through the Stew-Mac catalog and saw this JLD Bridge system that claimed to pull the "belly" out of an acoustic and keep it out. It looked like a great idea but I was worried it would deaden some of the warmth and resonance. Anything was worth a try to avoid major modification. I got out the maple scraps and oak dowels and in no time had fashioned a duplicate of what I saw in the catalog. I grit my teeth,  drilled one hole in the bridge, and mounted it. Over the next week I slowly increased the torque playing it each time. To my amazement it not only pulled 90% of the belly out but improved the resonance and gave this sweetheart it's voice back. To relieve some of the tension on the neck and body I put together a set of .008 steels for it. Wow! I guess the best way to describe what it sounds like now is "acoustic harpsichord". Mic'd, this baby sounds like a chorus of angles! I've had many "It's gotta be a Taylor or Martin!" guys play this and you'd be surprised to know how many have an old Alvarez 12 like it today!