Which Recording King guitar fits how you play?
The 2026 Standard Series gives you four body shapes, and we would choose by how and where you play before worrying about wood. A dreadnought, the D60 or D70H, is the guitar for rhythm in a jam or a band, because the big body and the full 25.4 inch scale give you the volume and low end to hold your own next to a banjo. An orchestra model, the OM60 or OM70H, keeps that scale on a smaller body that answers faster and balances the bass against the treble, which suits fingerstyle and anyone who plays seated. The 12-fret 000s, the 00060, the all-mahogany 00066 and the rosewood 00070H, move the bridge into the middle of the lower bout and sound warmer and fuller than a small guitar should. The Bluesmaster 00s, the BM60 and BM70, run a shorter 24.8 inch scale that lowers string tension and makes bends easier, which is why blues players and anyone with smaller hands gravitate to them.
Once you have a shape, the number picks the wood: 60 is solid African mahogany back and sides, 70 is solid East Indian rosewood, and the H models add herringbone trim with squares-and-diamonds inlays. Mahogany keeps the sound focused and tight, rosewood adds bass and sustain, and in every pair the rosewood guitar is $200 more. The Standard Series page walks through that comparison model by model.
Why these guitars took a year to arrive
St. Louis Music took over worldwide distribution and product development for Recording King on August 1, 2025, after The Music Link, the company that had run the brand since 2007, closed. Chris Meikle, the executive vice president who rebuilt Alvarez's quality over the past decade, looked over the Recording King inventory already in the pipeline and would not ship what did not meet his standard, which we covered at the time in our blog post on the acquisition. The result is that the first new Recording King guitars under St. Louis Music did not appear until the fall of 2026, starting with the Dirty 30's parlors in September and followed by the Standard Series you see here. We sat down with Chris for our podcast in August 2025 and again at IBMA, and that second conversation is the video above.
Resonators and the older Recording King guitars
Recording King's Maxwell and RR-series squareneck resonators and the Phil Leadbetter signature model have been regulars on our wall for years, and we expect to see them again as St. Louis Music works through the catalog. Anything we have in stock, including pre-owned Recording King guitars on consignment, shows up in the grid above. Our Recording King banjos have their own page, and the brand page covers the history from the Montgomery Ward catalogs to today.
Every Recording King guitar we sell ships after our 23-Point Professional Inspection. Because the Standard Series sits under $1,000, those guitars fall under our 14-day evaluation period rather than the Dread-Not Guarantee.
