Acoustic Magazine: The UK's Only Dedicated Acoustic Guitar Magazine

Acoustic Magazine, billed simply as Acoustic, was a British magazine for acoustic guitar players, promoted as the UK's only dedicated acoustic guitar magazine. Listed in the batch records for London, England, with its website at acousticmagazine.com, it served a readership that general guitar magazines covered only in passing: players of steel-string and nylon-string acoustic guitars, fingerstyle specialists, folk and roots musicians, singer-songwriters, and the luthiers who build their instruments.

Each issue combined interviews with artists, gear tests and reviews, and expert columns from respected acoustic players. In a market dominated by electric guitar culture, Acoustic made the unamplified instrument — its woods, its makers, its techniques and its repertoire — the whole subject.

A Niche of Its Own

The magazine's founding proposition was focus. British guitar publishing was strong but electric-led: rock guitarists had multiple titles competing for them, while acoustic players — a large constituency spanning folk clubs, churches, open-mic nights, recording studios and bedrooms — found their instruments reviewed as an occasional sideline. Acoustic reversed the priority. Its billing as the UK's only dedicated acoustic guitar magazine, and in its social media description as the UK's only monthly magazine dedicated solely to acoustic guitars, was both a slogan and a market position: if you played acoustic guitar, this was the magazine for you.

That position shaped everything in the title, from the instruments on test — dreadnoughts, jumbos, parlour guitars, twelve-strings, resonators and classical models — to the columnists it recruited, who were drawn from the worlds of fingerstyle, folk, jazz and roots music rather than rock.

Publishers: Oyster House, Blaze and Future

Early factsheets for Acoustic list its publishing company as Oyster House Media Ltd, with distribution through WHSmith, HMV and independent newsagents, online sales and a newsletter, and a cover price of £4.25 in that period, publishing bi-monthly.

By 2014 the magazine was with Blaze Publishing Ltd of Leamington Spa, which that year published Acoustic Magazine Presents The Book of British Guitar Making, a 138-page guide to bespoke acoustic luthiery in the United Kingdom, with contributions associated with Guy Little and Newton Faulkner. Blaze was a specialist publisher whose portfolio spanned music and field sports, and Acoustic sat alongside its Bass Guitar Magazine, Drummer and iDrum titles.

In May 2016, Future plc acquired Blaze Publishing's titles and events for an undisclosed sum. Acoustic Magazine moved to Future with the rest of Blaze's music portfolio, joining one of Britain's strongest stables of music titles: MusicRadar.com, Total Guitar, Guitarist, Rhythm, Future Music and Computer Music. Future's chief executive, Zillah Byng-Thorne, described the deal as strengthening Future's position as one of the UK's leading publishers in music, gaining the Blaze team's specialist knowledge. The acquisition also brought Blaze's events, including the London Acoustic Show, the London Bass Guitar Show and the London Drum Show, into Future's events division.

The Columnists and Contributors

Acoustic's authority rested on its expert columnists, a roster of respected acoustic players whose names recurred across its marketing. They included Martin Taylor, the celebrated jazz fingerstyle guitarist; Martin Simpson, one of Britain's most influential folk guitarists; Gordon Giltrap, known for his virtuoso instrumental compositions; Doyle Dykes, the American fingerstyle virtuoso; and Martin Barre, of Jethro Tull fame, whose acoustic work sat alongside his electric reputation.

Factsheets for the magazine also listed figures such as Pierre Bensusan, the Franco-Algerian guitarist renowned for his DADGAD tuning work, Maartin Allcock, Chris Gibbons, Simon Mayor and Julie Ellison among its editorial contributors. For readers, these were not celebrity ornaments but teachers: players whose columns dissected technique, arranging and tone from inside a lifetime of acoustic playing. A reader forum discussion of the magazine from the Acoustic Guitar Forum era praised it as really good, singling out its reviews of instruments and its interviews with luthiers and players, and its freedom from lifestyle padding.

Gear Tests and Reviews

Gear coverage was the magazine's engine room. Acoustic guitars are unusually individual instruments: tonewoods, bracing, body size and neck profile change the sound and feel profoundly, and prices run from a hundred pounds to many thousands for handmade instruments. Acoustic tested this equipment as the core of its service to readers, reviewing guitars alongside the amplification, pickups, strings and accessories that acoustic players use on stage and in the studio.

Reader debate about the reviews could be exacting, which itself testified to their importance. Forum correspondents argued over whether reviews gave enough dimensional information beyond generic body-style descriptions, and over reviewers' preferences between tonewoods — the kind of argument only a knowledgeable readership, reading closely, bothers to have. In a small market, the magazine's verdicts carried weight with players deciding between instruments they might keep for decades.

The Book of British Guitar Making

The magazine's interest in lutherie — the craft of guitar making — was a defining strand, and it produced its most substantial spin-off. Acoustic Magazine Presents The Book of British Guitar Making, published by Blaze Publishing in 2014, was subtitled the essential guide to bespoke acoustic luthiery in the United Kingdom.

Britain has a notable tradition of independent guitar makers, building instruments one at a time for professional and serious amateur players. A magazine that regularly interviewed luthiers was the natural home for such a book, and its appearance signalled the depth of Acoustic's engagement with the craft end of its subject: not just playing guitars, but understanding how the best of them come to be built, voiced and finished.

Events: The London Acoustic Show

Acoustic's world extended into live events through its publisher's show portfolio. The London Acoustic Show, one of the established and respected events Blaze brought to Future in 2016 alongside the London Bass Guitar Show and the London Drum Show, gathered acoustic players, makers and retailers in the capital.

For a niche magazine, an associated show matters. It turns a readership into a community that can meet, try instruments from the luthiers the magazine profiles, and hear the columnists and cover artists play. The acoustic guitar world is tactile — instruments must be held and heard — and the show gave the magazine's pages a physical counterpart.

Digital Editions

Acoustic was also sold as a digital magazine through app-based newsstands. Its app listing described interviews with the biggest artists and expert columns from respected acoustic musicians, and offered subscriptions of six issues over six months and thirteen issues over twelve months, as well as single issues and back issues — a structure reflecting a monthly publishing rhythm in its later period, and allowing the title to reach acoustic players worldwide beyond UK newsstands.

Digital availability mattered for a specialist title whose potential readers were geographically scattered. A fingerstyle player outside the big cities, or overseas, could follow British acoustic coverage, gear tests and columns without relying on imported print copies.

The Acoustic World It Covered

The magazine's lifetime coincided with a strong period for the acoustic guitar in popular music. The singer-songwriter tradition, folk revivalism, Americana and roots music, and the unplugged format all kept the acoustic guitar culturally central, while British folk and fingerstyle playing enjoyed notable visibility. Players such as the magazine's own contributors — Simpson in folk, Taylor in jazz, Faulkner in contemporary percussive playing — embodied the range of what an acoustic guitar could do.

Acoustic's coverage followed that range: folk and roots music, fingerstyle technique, instrumental composition, and the craft traditions behind the instruments. Where a general guitar magazine might treat an acoustic feature as a change of pace, Acoustic treated the full spectrum of acoustic playing as the main event, issue after issue.

Place in British Guitar Publishing

Within Future's portfolio after 2016, Acoustic complemented rather than duplicated its stablemates. Guitarist, Europe's longest-running guitar publication, covered the guitar world broadly; Total Guitar served rock players; Acoustic held the specialist acoustic brief, bringing Future what its chief executive called the Blaze team's specialist knowledge and insight.

That a major publisher acquired and maintained a title devoted solely to one instrument family underlines the commercial logic the magazine proved: acoustic players are committed, long-term enthusiasts who buy instruments, strings, amplification and tuition for decades, and who value a magazine written by specialists rather than generalists.

Significance

Acoustic Magazine's significance is its singularity. For its years in print it stood as the UK's only dedicated acoustic guitar magazine, recruiting an exceptional roster of player-columnists, testing instruments for a discerning readership, championing British luthiery in print and in book form, and anchoring a community that gathered at events such as the London Acoustic Show.

Its journey through three publishers — Oyster House Media, Blaze Publishing and Future plc — traces the consolidation of British specialist publishing in the 2010s, but its editorial idea never changed: the acoustic guitar, played well and built well, deserved a magazine of its own.