WEATHER CASTER

How climate extremes led Gene Baker to re-envision the acoustic-electric with b3 Guitars' Cielo Deluxe.

- DAVE HUNTER

ARGUABLY THE BEST new guitar designs are created to fill a specific need. And when one of the country's elite guitar makers conceives of a model to suit his own particular tonal desires - as Gene Baker did with the new b3 Cielo Deluxe hybrid acoustic-electric - chances are it's going to be something special.

Building under his b3 brand and other banners that his guitars have worn in the past, Baker is far and away best known for alternative takes on classic solid-body electrics, an arena that his pedigree certainly reinforces. After being named a Master Builder at the Fender Custom Shop following a tenure building for Gibson, then moving on to head up the acclaimed Premier Builder's Guild, Baker needs no introduction. But the Cielo Deluxe we're checking out this issue comes from entirely elsewhere, while still perhaps counterintuitively- screaming "Gene Baker creation" from top to bottom.

When I propose that the Cielo model is a little different from what most people have come to expect from b3, Baker explains its origins. "The design was inspired by a special purpose," he says. "Tehachapi, California, where we now live, is a high mountain desert town where it's very dry and we experience over 24 inches of snow per winter. I had a very nice boutique acoustic that was coming nearly unglued once we relocated to Tehachapi, whereas it survived perfectly for almost a decade in all other places we'd lived. So I needed to get that guitar off the mountain for its survival and find a suitable replacement.