Mo Pitney

About

Mo Pitney played the Grand Ole Opry for the first time in 2014 and walked off to a standing ovation, which is not what usually happens to a singer nobody has heard of yet. He sat in with us on Shoppe Talk this August. What comes up fast when you talk gear with him is that he got to country through bluegrass — guitar at twelve, banjo at fifteen — and he never put the banjo hand down. The D-28 Authentic 1937 is the period build: Adirondack over Guatemalan rosewood, forward-shifted scalloped bracing, hide glue, and an aged torrefied top. It's loud and dry the way a real pre-war box is, with enough headroom to stay clean when you lean into it hard. The D-41 answers the other half of the job — Sitka over East Indian rosewood with abalone appointments, a broader and sweeter midrange that tucks in under a vocal instead of fighting it. Same body shape, opposite temperaments. The picks are where the bluegrass shows. A Golden Gate ivoroid thumbpick and .025-inch brass fingerpicks are a banjo player's setup, and they hit a guitar top with a different attack than a flatpick ever will. Elliott cuts its capos to one specific nut width and fingerboard radius instead of pulling a curved board flat, which is why the third string stays in tune when he clamps down in the middle of a set. Mo is a TAS Community Pro and earns a commission when you buy through this page. Every instrument here ships after our 23-Point Professional Inspection, and anything $1,000 and up carries the Dread-Not Guarantee — a full year of 90% trade-in credit, pre-tax, plus a 30-day in-home trial. Things come off this page when they sell and come back when we restock.