CORT FLOW-OC

97
SEPTEMBER 2022 GU ITARIST
CORT FLOW-OC & GOLD-A6 BOCOTE
3
2
The OC is an OM-sized cutaway, fitted
with an LR Baggs Anthem pickup for live
use. It’s a good-looker, with considerable
kerb appeal fresh out of the box. A closer
look reveals a cedar top with mahogany
back and sides, which is, of course, a fairly
standard combo in acoustic guitars. Cedar
is a favourite among fingerstylists. It’s
slightly more sedate than spruce, with a
seductive warm tone, and doesn’t really
demonstrate a settling in or ‘opening up’
period. It will mature over the course
of time, but won’t change quite as much
in tonal character as the various forms
of spruce. Mahogany is part of royalty
when it comes to guitar woods, bringing
sweet highs, a punchy midrange and good
rounded bass to the table.
So far so good, but it’s in the profiling of
the mahogany neck that we meet one of
Cort’s innovative features. If you cast your
mind back to when Ernie Ball Music Man
first introduced their Eddie Van Halen
electric way back in the 1990s, you might
remember that Eddie wanted the neck
profile to feel ‘worn in’. To this end, his
signature guitar’s neck was asymmetrical –
there was almost an aircraft wing feel to it,
with less roundedness on the treble side
than on the bass. It’s a similar idea with
Cort’s Ergo-A profiling, but the asymmetry
changes as you proceed up the neck. This
is a similar concept to compound radiusing
1. The Flow-OC is fitted
with an LR Baggs
Anthem pickup with the
controls tucked away in
the guitar’s soundhole
2. A beautifully crafted
cedar top sits atop the
OC’s mahogany back and
sides and the cutaway
gives access to the
guitar’s upper frets
3. The neck’s heel is
slimmer and flatter
than on many of the
OC’s contemporaries
It’s a good-looker,
with considerable
kerb appeal fresh
out of the box
GIT489.rev_cort.indd 97GIT489.rev_cort.indd 97 04/08/2022 16:5404/08/2022 16:54