Frets Magazine
Winter 2006

Read this article on the Frets website.

When I first started playing guitar, I always wanted something different. I didn’t want to play the same guitars that everybody else played. I guess on some level I knew then that having an identity on the guitar was one of the trickiest things to come by, and a unique instrument would get me one step closer. Over the years, I’ve come to realize that the reason so many players choose the same instruments is because those instruments are awesome, and I’ve added a few tried and true classics to my collection. But I never completely lost that desire to play something unique. That’s part of the reason I wanted to check out the Babicz line of acoustics. I was intrigued by the way the strings splayed out over the guitar’s top, creating a look that was reminiscent of bike spokes or bridge cables. And although that may be the most noticeable feature of these instruments, it’s clear that Babicz has a lot of unique ideas going on.

Babicz Jumbo Rosewood Cutaway

Structurally, there is a lot going on with this guitar. Let’s look first at the way the it’s strung. Rather than a standard bridge, Babicz guitars employ an “Adjustable Torque Reducing Split Bridge.” The design is meant to address what Jeff Babicz sees as drawbacks to traditional designs. Basically, the strings don’t terminate at the bridge, which is what causes the bellying effect on acoustic tops. Instead, the strings pass over the bridge, through the string retainer (which in turn puts downward pressure on the bridge), and on to the string anchors on the lower bout. Attaching the strings to the top not only looks bitchin’, it also spreads out the string pull to the entire soundboard—not just the center, which is actually the weakest part of the top. This method also allows Babicz to employ much lighter bracing—bracing that can be designed for sonic, rather than structural, considerations. This results in a soundboard that can move more freely for better tonal balance and truer bass response.

If that’s not forward-thinking enough for you, there’s the Continually Adjustable Neck. Anyone who has tried to adjust the action on an acoustic knows that it can be a risky, invasive procedure. Lowering the saddle changes the tone and resetting the neck can only be done by a skilled pro. What Babicz has done is to give players the ability to change their action on the fly with an ordinary Allen wrench. Not to be confused with the trussrod adjustment (which these guitars also feature), using this Allen wrench at the neck heel moves the neck up and down in relation to the strings. There is no change in neck angle and thus no real change in pitch. It really works. In a matter of seconds, I took the Jumbo Cutaway from a robust strummer to a low-action flatpicking shred machine. I took the action so low that it buzzed and then cranked it up high enough to play slide. It’s really amazing and the handy clamp to hold the Allen wrench on the back of the headstock takes me back to my Floyd Rose days—yeah!

So enough about all the high-tech stuff—how does this guitar sound? In a word, great. The Jumbo Cutaway has a full, clear voice with excellent balance. It has a present, articulate sound with uncommon clarity from string to string. Maybe because of the neck design or the string arrangement, this guitar has incredible sustain, particularly in the upper register. On the Babicz website, he talks about avoiding the “dreaded fretboard ‘dropoff’” past the neck/body joint and that problem certainly seems to be solved here.

The Jumbo Cutaway sports the L.R. Baggs iMix pickup/preamp system, making it a great gigging guitar. In fact, when you plug in, the adjustable neck becomes an even cooler feature. I found that a lower action, when played with a light touch, made for a great amplified acoustic tone that was easy on the hands. But whether you play it as a straight acoustic or plug it in, this guitar rocks. Very cool.

Babicz Signature D’esque

The body shape is similar to a dreadnought (which explains the name, as in “dreadnought-esque”) but with a narrower waist, smaller upper bout, and a rounded lower bout. Visually speaking, this guitar is simply stunning. Everything about it is top-notch, from the German spruce top (with a nitrocellulose, high-gloss lacquer finish) to the figured Brazilian rosewood back, sides, and headstock veneer to the one-piece Honduran mahogany neck, this is one of the sweetest looking acoustics I’ve ever seen. The tortoiseshell binding is luscious and the abalone inlay is very classy. The gold Grover locking tuners (with ebony buttons) reinforce the notion that this is a serious, high-end instrument.

The D’esque is sonically beautiful as well. It’s loud and full and has a very present quality, helped out by the awesome side port that serves as your own personal monitor. Compared to the Identity, I hear more highs, more lows, and more volume out of the D’esque. It’s inspiring to play, with a clear, distinct voice that works great for fingerpicking or strumming. A term some testers used was “modern” to describe the D’esque’s timbres, and that seems fitting. Certain passages have a clarity on this guitar that I had a hard time matching on other acoustics—almost like a 6-string high-definition TV.

I once again had a blast raising and lowering the neck on the D’esque and I discovered another cool thing: Babicz’s Continually Adjustable Neck System makes it much easier to use more extreme tunings, both above and below standard pitch. For instance, dropping most acoustics down to DADGAD or below (say, to open C) typically necessitates using heavier strings to avoid the rattling and buzzing caused by the decreased string tension. Not with this guitar. I took out the trusty Allen wrench and simply raised the D’esque’s action until the rattles went away. It took about five seconds. Conversely, I found that higher tunings, such as open e and eBeABe (DADGAD up a full step)—unadvisable if not impossible on most acoustics—were actually manageable on the D’esque because I could lower the action.

Unless you’ve tried a D’esque, it’s fair to say that you’ve never played anything like this. It’s not cheap, but it is in line with many handcrafted, top-of-the-line acoustics. This guitar would be perfect for players—admittedly well-heeled players—who don’t want what an old-school acoustic offers. Or, more likely, the D’esque will appeal to players who already have some benchmark acoustics in their collection and want to add a future classic.

Babicz Signature Website

Guitar World Magazine
February 2006

Video by Guitar World demostrating the spider. [18MB]

Jeff Babicz and Jeff Carano are no strangers to innovative musical engineering. The two worked together at the Steinberger Guitar Company, renowned for the advanced design of its headless, paddleshaped guitars and basses. Given Babicz and Carano's background, it's perhaps not surprising that their new company, Babicz Guitars, is making its mark with some rather unusual designs of its own. Take my review guitar, for example: the first thing you notice about the sleek and dramatic-looking Babicz Spider-O6E acoustic guitar is the weblike pattern created by the strings as they fan out over the guitar's top. Far from being a cosmetic gimmick, the design is, like the Steinberger's headless neck, a sonic enhancement — one might even say "a revelation."

Design
The basis of the Babicz design is its patented icZ Lateral Compression Soundboard. In traditional acoustic guitar design, the strings are anchored to the bridge. Vibrations are focused at the bridge, as is the stress from string pull. This produces a very rigid top with limited bass reproduction. Heavy X-bracing helps to support the top and distribute vibrations across the top, but it also weighs down the top and prevents it from vibrating fully. Babicz's icZ system is designed to reduce or eliminate these shortcomings. The strings are anchored, via studs, directly to the soundboard over a larger area of the top. This (to use Babicz's term) "energizes" the top, allowing it to resonate more fully. Furthermore, by shifting tension from the center of the top to the bottom edge, Babicz can utilize lighter and more delicate bracing, allowing the top to vibrate more fully and produce a fuller sound that is balanced across its frequency spectrum. Does it work? Let's take a look at the Spider and find out.

Features
The Identity Series Spider is the latest Babicz instrument and certainly the most striking looking. The thin, single cutaway body is two-tone black with a satin finish top and neck and gloss black back, sides and pickguard. There is no binding; the only ornamentation on the all-mahogany body is a contrasting soundhole ring that gives the Spider a high-tech look. The mahogany neck has a comfortable "C" contour and a rosewood fingerboard with dot inlays. The peghead is marked with a script logo and "Black Widow" hourglass, a clever, if subtle visual. The head also carries a twoway truss rod and Grover tuners. Incidentally, while these design features are common to all Babicz guitars, the company offers two series of models that vary in body style and wood choice: the Identity Series guitars, which are handmade in Indonesia, and the more expensive Signature Series models, which are built in the U.S. by Jeff Babicz himself. As mentioned above, the icZ system eliminates the need for heavy X bracing. Instead, the Spider has two longitudinal braces. Babicz has rethought the bridge as well, which consists of a static string retainer behind a bridge/saddle unit. Since it's bolted to the top, rather than glued, it is freely adjustable for intonation. Other features worth noting include an onboard L.R. Baggs Element Active EQ system and a revolutionary neck joint that can be quickly adjusted for height without affecting intonation. Other moveable heel designs tilt the neck, affecting the intonation, but the Babicz system moves vertically on a rail. Simply pop the Allen wrench (conveniently clipped to the back of the headstock), give the recessed bolt in the heel a twist and the string height changes, without requiring a retune.

Performance
All this innovation makes the Babicz an enjoyable and versatile guitar. The icZ system produces a well-defined sound could be described as "modern," with a precise attack, excellent clarity and good separation of bass and treble voices, eliminating some of the "woody" midrange typical of olderstyle guitars. It certainly lends itself to amplification, and the L.R. Baggs system works like a charm, giving the Spider a very versatile pluggedin sound. Moreover, the strings on the Spider felt more relaxed than on standard acoustics. This is down, once again, to the icZ system, which uses a longer length of string overall (though standard-length strings are used), resulting in a lighter feel, even on heavier-gauge strings. The adjustable neck lets you switch from delicate fingerpicking to "Bluegrass banging" or beefy slide action in just seconds, then crank the neck back down in less time than it takes to introduce the next tune. This guitar would be a great live choice even if you don't feel you need the instant action-changing feature.

The Bottom Line
The Spider's versatility, durability and sound are mind boggling, especially for a guitar in this price range. Babicz offers numerous different models, some perhaps more conventional looking, but the darkly dashing black Spider is a standout guitar in every respect.

PRO: Extremely balanced tone, fuller sound, fast and advanced neck-adjustment system, great value for price.
CON: Unusual look won't appeal to some

It's a story about tension, really. The incredible tension the average acoustic guitar must withstand to delay its sacrificial suicide—death in pursuit of ultimate tone—as long as possible. The steel strings that an acoustic guitar is strung with put a lot of stress on the top, which needs to move to produce sound. Light bracing ensures that the top responds quickly to the strings and vibrates powerfully to move the most air and produce the most sound. However, light bracing also makes it likely that the soundboard will eventually bend and bow under the strain of the strings.

And so it was with tone, tension, and top implosion in mind that professional luthier and former Steinberger employee Jeff Babicz (pronounced bab-its) began developing the icZ Acoustic System, a design different from any other. Instead of settling for a guitar destined for the trash heap with uneven sound, iffy intonation, and nearly unadjustable action, he came up with the icZ system. It relieves the stress from the top of the guitar, makes it more comfortable and adjustable, and therefore more playable. The icZ system is applied beautifully in the Identity Series, a more affordable take on Babicz's custom shop creations.

Take me to the top
The top of the guitar is the first thing guitarists, and people in general, notice about a Babicz Identity Series axe. Instead of a standard bridge where the strings are pinned through the top with bridge pins or anchored by slots in the bridge, the strings pass over the bridge saddle and through a rosewood string retainer before fanning out across the lower bout and terminating at anchors near the edge of the soundboard. Not just a visual gimmick, this construction helps the guitar achieve a sound that more accurately renders the natural tonality of the top.

The middle of the top is the most flexible point on an acoustic guitar and traditional bracing has to be heavy at that spot to resist the pull of the strings. With the icZ system the load of the strings is spread equally around the top. With that tension relieved the soundboard can be braced with fewer and lighter braces for more unrestrained vibration. When you play a Babicz guitar you hear the top freed from heavy X bracing. The string anchors are also reinforced as lightly as possible so that the strings' pull on the top is unencumbered by heavy bracing. The anchors don't require heavy bracing because the main load of the strings has been shifted from an upward pull to a lateral pull and spread across a much wider area.

Crossing the Bridge
The bridge used on the Identity Series also deserves some attention. As mentioned above, it's far from being a standard acoustic bridge. First of all, it's a two-piece system instead of a standard single-piece bridge. The split design keeps the strings aligned with tension across the saddle but redistributes much of the load normally carried by the bridge. Secondly, the two-piece bridge is attached to the top by special fasteners, not glue. The advantage is you've got much more adjustability to correct faulty intonation. The bridge section can be loosened and moved forward or backward in special slots to intonate your guitar.

The use of a string retainer with fanned individual string anchors offers an advantage beyond reducing the tension on the soundboard. It also reduces tension in the strings, making the Identity Series easier to play. Even though every Babicz uses standard acoustic strings right out of the box, it uses much more of them than the average acoustic, extending the strings past the bridge by about six inches. With more string in play and less tension, each string's sweet spot is extended and the feel is relaxed.

At your command
The icZ Acoustic System really delivers the goods when it comes to playability, too. The neck uses a special joint that is freely height-adjustable for the ultimate custom-fit string action. At the joint, the neck is unattached to the top and sides of the guitar, only joining the back. This allows constant adjustment and also frees the top of the guitar even further for more resonance and pure soundboard projection.

To make serious adjustments to the action on a standard acoustic, the neck must be re-set to adjust the angle of the neck, which also changes the scale length. In contrast, the icZ neck joint can be adjusted by simply turning an Allen-head bolt with a supplied wrench. Since only the height is changing, the guitar is still in tune and fully intonated.

In performance
When I played the Babicz Identity Series Jumbo that Musician's Friend sent for review, I was amazed first by its sound, and second by its smooth and silky playing characteristics. Notes rang true and loud from one string to the next, all the way up and down the neck. I quickly found that slight pitch changes were possible by pushing down or pulling to the side of the exposed string running from the retainer to the string anchor. Picking the string behind the bridge produced tones that ranged from harmonic-type pings to tones reminiscent of a mandolin or harp, useful for special accents. It also seemed to diffuse the normal soundhole-centered amplification of an acoustic. Its solid spruce top seemed to resonate more freely from side to side and top to bottom. The adjustable neck joint made it easy to go from slide-style to low, electric-style action with a simple turn of the wrench.

Babicz has produced an innovative, distinct, and original design that takes every aspect of acoustic craftsmanship and improves it. Many artists, from Todd Rundgren to Porcupine Tree, have proven its appeal by making it their acoustic of choice. With the Identity Series, guitarists everywhere can have a completely stable, very playable acoustic with tone to spare.

Features & Specs: