The dark cherry and subdued nature of this Ruokangas Artisan makes it so elegant. The flamed Arctic birch explodes under the tuxedo appearance in dark colors and silver.

What I usually say about the Ruokangas is that it is an excellent marriage of selected wood types and pickups.

The Mojo Grande, VSOP Supreme and the Dukes are all Spanish cedar for the body core. The Mojo Grande is a fingerpicker’s electric guitar that exploits the fully hollow body, woods and pickups.

You might go to older and more established models and call the Duke Artisan, Juha’s Gibson 335 but that would be rather and maybe completely misleading. This is a Ruokangas therefore it is an original creation from cellulose to copper. Juha Ruokangas is primarily an artist when it comes to the guitar. He hears and sees in his own way.

The sound of this guitar is, like all Ruokangas guitars, superlative. The semi-like-a-335-hollow and the one “F” hole nature of the set neck body design makes for a powerful and clear sound. The Dukebucker is a pickup thought out for tone and I’d venture to say one of the most distinctive sounding pickups out there.

As I hammer home again that this guitar is a marriage of wood, pickup and design, the Dukebuckers sounded great on a VSOP Special, a bolt-on-neck Fender type design in alder. The pickup is all about tone.

The body core of the Artisan is Spanish cedar. Spanish cedar is a neck wood for flamenco guitars. Spanish cedar is not preferred for classical guitar tops but like other cedars, Spanish is a lighter and a more sonically active wood than mahogany.

With this in mind the obvious thing to do is to detail the pickup for the wood and consider that vintage guitars have developed a relationship of pickup and wood, as the wood has dried and the pickups were from a period when clarity mattered more than distortion.

The Artisan, as all Ruokangas guitars, might be considered to have a vintage sound. Spanish cedar is a dry sounding and light wood. What happens to an old guitar body is it generally dries out. Just a thought…

Flamed Arctic birch has the flamed maple characteristics; it is a bright and tortured wood from cold climes. At this time I cannot separate the sound out as being any different than flamed maple. This is something that Juha reinforced when I asked him about this as he makes the same Dukes in different kinds of maple. It would seem they are sonically the same.

The Artisan weighs little when you compare it to a guitar made with mahogany and maple like a Gibson Les Paul.

To explain the Ruokangas sound is to use the word “vintage.” I describe a cedar/Indian rosewood classical guitar as milk chocolate the same way that Ricardo Cobo describes it. Words fail to describe sounds but milk chocolate is more “mellow” than semi-sweet.

In the final analysis you can give a few words to describe this Artisan. It has tremendous tone and in this tone you can hear the wood and the pickups interact. It has a slight acoustic quality that the semi-hollow has which adds to the dynamics you can use with a pick or fingers.

The distortion sound with the Artisan, in a Naylor Dual 60 amp with 2-12 Naylor speakers is very Rock & Roll which to me means a sound that has more clarity in the distortion with distinction of individual notes in a chord while still breaking up to the level of ZZ Top.

The Artisan in clean channel is sweet on the front pickup and trumpet-like on the rear. The pickups are tapped and in single coil mode it honks a little more than the solid and chambered Duke. This makes it a slightly more versatile guitar if you want a two in one Ruokangas.

This guitar is presently being offered on eBay.