“Unbeatable... A guitar built for sessions, ready for all occasions”: Duesenberg Alliance Series Tom Bukovac Session Man review

What is it?

When we talk about first-call session players and the electric guitars they take into battle, we tend to talk versatility. Who knows what the artist or the producer is going to ask for. Session players need to be ready for anything. So, too, do their guitars.

Think of the great session players. Dan Huff has his James Tyler S-style that is to the common or garden variety Stratocaster what Micheal Knight’s KITT was to the family saloon.

Brent Mason has his ’67 Telecaster in mod-shop primer gray, with tricksy wiring for his three pickups, a B-Bender, the whole nine yards. If the producer wants something that can’t be played on that, perhaps they don’t need guitar at all. Larry Carlton has his ES-335, the O.G. “play anything” guitar.

Tom Bukovac’s Alliance Series signature guitar from Germany’s Duesenberg is built in this spirit.

Bukovac's 'Session Man' is a handsome single-cut semi-hollow with a meticulously cut f-hole that might make you think of a cross between an ES-335 and a Les Paul or an off-menu custom version of Duesenberg’s very own Starplayer. But spend an hour with it and it’s clear that it is very much its own thing. It has a pair of vintage-voiced humbuckers, a three-way selector switch, volume and tone – but lo, there's more.

What sets this apart is the piezo at the bridge, which can be added and blended with the magnetic pickups' output.

“I just wanted to help design something different than had been previously available,” says Bukovac. “The first natural finish [Duesenberg], no fretboard inlays, two humbuckers, and a piezo pickup.”

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We can’t say if this is something bespoke to this Bukovac signature model or to all Alliance Series electrics, but inside the handsome tooled-leather guitar case there is a multi-purpose tool.

This tool can measure your action. It can be used to perform a number of routine setup adjustments. And, most importantly, it can be used to open a bottle of beer.

Is there nothing this guitar and its accessories can’t do? Well, let’s find out.

Specs

• Launch price: $4,599/£3,029/€3,016
• Made: Germany
• Type: Six-string semi-hollow electric guitar
• Body: Laminated quilted maple top, laminated figured maple back and sides, with multi-ply black-and-white bending
• Neck: Three: Three-piece figured maple, glued in / Medium D profile
• Fingerboard: Indian rosewood, 12" radius, with session man inlay at 12th fret
• Scale length: 25.5"/648mm
• Nut/width: Synthetic bone / 42.5mm
• Frets: 22, jumbo (2.8x 1.0mm) stainless steel
• Hardware: Duesenberg open-gear Z-tuners, Duesenberg steel saddle piezo bridge, Diamond Deluxe Tremola vibrato
• Electrics: 2x GrandVintage humbuckers (neck and bridge), piezo at bridge, 1x Volume, 1x Tone, 3-Way Pickup Selector, Piezo switch
• Weight: 7.50lb/3.40kg
• Left-handed options: NNone
• Finishes: Natural, gloss
• Cases: Hard-shell case included
• Contact: Duesenberg

Build quality

Build quality rating: ★★★★★

You can usually tell how much a brand values its guitars by the case they ship them in. Look at the pictures of the case above. Duesenberg is proud of this one.

While the factory setup of a guitar is more a playability issue than it is build quality – after all, every player has their own preferences – Duesenberg has nonetheless put in the effort anyway, putting this through their Plek system before putting it back into its case and shipping to the distributor.

It is the German brand’s house style to riff on vintage US automobile and golden era guitar design, giving it its own art deco spin that’s just on the right side of ostentatious – certainly on Bukovac’s guitar, which is all natural, three dimensional with laminated quilted maple on the top, flamed maple down the back and sides, with maple centre block to put the squeeze on feedback.

The three-piece neck, too, is a handsome piece of American flamed maple. Make that three pieces, with the centre piece more plain, the outer two neck pieces that form the shoulders more figured. Its Indian rosewood fingerboard is uniform dark brown with just a hint of rouge. Utterly inviting.

The fretwork is immaculate, with the tangs tactfully disappeared into the single-ply binding that extends across the fingerboard and is reprised on the headstock. Multi-ply black-and-white binding makes the body look loved.

That art deco on Motor City vibe is in evidence on the headstock. It’s not quite vintage D’Angelico, but like the storied NYC jazz guitar company, Duesenberg does some of its most effective – and artsy – branding on the the headstock, with its stairstep profile, metal “D” logo, and decorative truss rod cover. Dig those tuners, too, with the textured metal buttons. Cool A.F.

The Diamond Deluxe Tremola system is in keeping with this aesthetic. In theory, this factory wiggle-stick has a similar action to the Bigsby, with its tailpiece extending to the endpin and branded with “D” for Duesenberg. But it has a longer, thinner arm. Spoilers for the playability section to follow: this sits better in the hand than a Bigsby, and I’d argue more natural for those of us who are more accustomed to the whammy bar on a Strat.

But if you are going to overhear two players talking in a bar about that fella Bukovac and his signature whip, chances are they’re going to be discussing the finer points of the electronics. This is where things get really interesting.

Ostensibly, it is a dual-humbucker platform, doing the ES-thing, the LP-thing, wiggle on the vibrato and you’ve got a little soupçon of Gretsch guitar flavour. But the ace in the hole is the bridge piezo, which has a pickguard-mounted slider switch to engage it, adding it to any pickup combination, with a notched tone control to blend it in.

The tone control behaves as normal when the piezo is disengaged. When the piezo is engaged, however, it’s a different story.

At its centre point, the tone control is a master tone, full up, roll it back to darken the guitar. Roll it clockwise past the notch and you blend in more of that piezo. it’s a simple way of presenting features that you don’t see every day – ergo, features that could otherwise complicate things. Session pro or pub gig champ, you don’t want that. Nobody does.

Playability

Playability rating: ★★★★½

There are a few ways you can look at the issue of playability. One is thinking in terms of sheer performance: can this guitar facilitate acts of virtuosity that where hitherto beyond your ability? There is no shortage of brands who design instruments for this very purpose, promising speed.

But playability is not just speed. It’s not just upper-fret access. This Bukovac signature model doesn’t overly concern itself with the latter. Its cutaway shares the rough geometry of a Les Paul. Its neck joint is standard for a semi-hollow. There are some feats of guitar engineering that are not worth the climb.

What it is concerned with is keeping you at the fretboard, keeping you playing, and if speed is your thing, then that slinky action allied to the stainless steel jumbo frets rewards the lightest tough, reminding us of some advice Bukovac shared on his YouTube channel for younger and inexperienced players – you don’t have to fret those notes so hard that they bend out of pitch.

Well, you don’t have to do that here. The Medium D profile neck measures an uncontroversial 21mm thick at the first fret, and it fattens up to 24mm at the 12th. It is no baseball bat. It ain’t no slide rule. Whether it is a Goldilocks profile depends on your tastes but it feels just right on this guitar.

As mentioned above, you can easily tuck the whammy bar under your pinkie while playing without, y’know, involuntarily bending, but it’s right there for when you need to. The action on this Duesenberg system is superlative.

Sounds

Sounds rating: ★★★★★

When I first heard that this was piezo-equipped, there was a switch, a detent on the tone knob, all kinds of thoughts came to mind. Was this a secret mode for adding quasi-acoustic tones on the fly, the sort of in-the-moment function that works well in a gig even if you’d resort to the real thing – i.e. an acoustic guitar – in the studio?

No. In fact, think of it less as a piezo, incorporated into the bridge design, and more of a secret sauce, magic seasoning, extra umami, to be added to taste. Bukovac says all guitars should have one, and please note he emailed the world “fabulous” in all caps. Both times.

“The piezo is a fabulous addition to any electric guitar,” he writes. “I truly wish that all electric guitars had one. It is fantastic for adding airy top end on clean and overdriven parts.”

Having worked out how to use it, I have to thank Bukovac, firstly for defining it better than I could, and secondly for thinking of it in the first place. I was going to describe it as a resonance switch, adding auxiliary highs to the magnetic pickups. But “airy top end” is exactly that. Its effect can be subtle, barely perceptible, or it can quite dramatic. It’s never overdone. It soups up that oxygenated je ne sais quoi that you are looking for from a centre-block semi.

The GrandVintage humbucker is Duesenberg’s PAF-alike, old school, medium output, Alnico magnets, balanced in the sense that they are warm and full but when you have the tone dimed – and especially when they’ve got the wind of a piezo behind them – they’re super bright too.

But setting aside the piezo for a moment, there’s already a lot of tone to be working through. The most obvious comparison would be with Gibson’s Electric Spanish lineage. Those tones are definitely within reach, particularly in the way the pickups – neck or bridge, it doesn’t really matter – sound totally dope with a clean tube amp tone and a splash of reverb but as you dial in some drive on the amp, or add some grit from a Fulltone OCD Germanium, they eat it up. They’re like the valedictorian student who can handle their liquor.

Style-wise, this puts all modes of musical expression at your fingertips. Categorically, this is phenomenal jazz guitar. That bridge humbucker exposes all the notes in a chord, making your foolhardy D minor Add11 in the 10th position well worth the effort. At the neck, it’s all woodland cream, syrupy sweet when the gain is jacked up.

Categorically, this is a great rock and pop guitar (chorus on the cleans for the verse, overdrive for the chorus). Yes, it’s an expensive high-end electric guitar but you are still allowed – nay, encouraged – to chug eighth-note power chords and trace out a melody. And thank God for that, because it sounds fantastic, and such bread and butter rhythm figures are the foundation of popular music.

At the bridge humbucker – again, hold my piezo, it’s a school night – we’ve got some ripping tones for the classic rock songbook, ‘60s, ‘70s, ‘80s or ‘90s... This is era-agnostic, really. It sounds convincing in Drop D for grunge riffs, but also at concert pitch playing Led Zep thunder riffs.

Now, the piezo – aka the piezo de la resistance. Airy top end, on tap, at any time, is, as Bukovac says, recommended. It will be a little quote/unquote extra for some musical purposes, but it could be the missing ingredient in your sound, adding a sheen, almost like an on-guitar mastering control might.

Don’t think of it as a boost, some +20dB push/pull function that you apply for solos. After all, there are some very good pedals for that. This is something else, something more compelling. Finally, a quick note on the mix position, which has been wired for “extra twang” and especially comes alive when you work the whammy bar, and the sustain. This thing rings out.

Verdict

A guitar like this does not come along every day. But then we should have expected something different. Just look at Duesenberg’s Joe Walsh signature model; there’s something about their artist collaborations that invite more daring innovations.

And his is a first for Duesenberg; that buttery caramel quilted maple is a far cry from its usual auto-shop inspired selection of swatches. But this is different without being radically untethered to classic electric guitar design.

This is not your granddaddy’s Les Paul or ES-335, and yet you can dial it in and it’ll give you that vibe – if called to a gig at a moment’s notice, it’ll play those parts. It’s not a Telecaster by any stretch, but in the mix position, piezo on full, it’s got enough high-end elasticity to it that you could work a Grand Ole Opry crowd with it.

In other words, it is, pretty much, a play anything guitar, the likes of which the eponymous ‘Session Man’ would need in the studio or on the stage. Highly functional, brilliant, a little eccentric, and no doubt in-demand despite the asking price… Hey, maybe it’s a little like the man it was made for.

MusicRadar verdict: Duesenberg and Tom Bukovac demonstrate that the evolutionary future of electric guitar requires borrowing “acoustic” technology, the humble piezo our missing link for high-frequency sparkle. When added to a top-tier dual-humbucker semi-hollow, with a vibrato to match, it is unbeatable – a guitar built for sessions, ready for all occasions.

Also try

Duesenberg Alliance Series Joe Walsh - $4,059 / £2,399 / €2,723
As I was saying, Duesenberg x high-profile artist = something totally different, and this doozy designed with and for Joe Walsh shows the German brand at its most decorative – and arguably showing off.

Gibson ES-330 - $3,499 / £3,099/ €3,599
This kissing cousin of the Casino is no gamble, and it's return is one of the best decisions Gibson has made in recent years. It's super-versatile, very charming, and a more old-school alternative.

Read more: Gibson ES-330 review

PRS SE Custom 24 Semi-Hollow Piezo - £1,499 / $1,500 / €1,750
Arguable the most versatile PRS SE model, arguably the best, this is a guitar that can compete with its US-made counterparts and if we're talking jobbing musicians, sessions to pay the bills, the value is off the charts.

Read more: PRS SE Custom 24 Semi-Hollow Piezo

Hands-on videos

Peach Guitars

No Talking...Just Tones | Duesenberg Alliance Series Tom Bukovac Signature - YouTube

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Vince Gill

Homeskoolin’ Bonus “Boss Man & Bubba” - YouTube

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