*ACTUAL PICTURES AND VIDEO

Sinker redwood is without a doubt the most spectacular of all tone woods. It possesses some human quality to its voice which, added to the deep resonance of Brazilian rosewood, creates some of the most astonishing instruments I have ever built. I cannot use it as much as I would like to because it is no always available. Only a fraction of sinker logs makes it to musical instrument grade.  The ebony bindings, bridge and double neck reinforcement make the instrument look simply MARVELOUS !   The Russian rosette and marquetry were also chosen thinking of the harmonious looks of the instrument and when you embrace her, you feel and perform like  a much better player...that is the signature of a Masterpiece guitar ! Cavatina is the piece I chose to show how brilliantly the melody shines against the deep resonating basses. The piece is taken to a whole new level. Playing on the 640mm radiused fingerboard makes playing natural and the left hand flows much lighter throughout the fingerboard.

640mm or 650 mm

Radiused or flat fingerboard?

Sinker logs like the ones above, are pulled from the bottom of lakes and rivers. Sometimes, scuba divers are needed to achieve the extraction.  Most of these logs are hundreds of years old (In one of the pictures above, you can see that the tree was cut with an hatchet). Due to a series of factors (The logs were too big and heavy to be pulled out of the rivers or the logs were caught by currents and were sucked to the bottom)  these logs were trapped by the muddy buttons of these water beds and this created like a time capsule where the wood was preserved in fantastic humidity conditions that made the wood season in a slow natural way during many centuries. Some of the logs are selected for musical instruments construction. The sound that these woods produce is unique and the grain has a beautiful coloration that changes according to the type of mud present in the water bed.

Radiused or flat fingerboard?
The radiused fingerboard has been around the acoustic and the electric guitar since day one. The same is true for most instruments of the Stringed family of instruments (violas, violins cellos, bass). Radiusing (image above) makes barre and left hand stopping A LOT easier. The only drawback is that you will NEVER want to play a  flat fingerboard after that. If you are having your custom guitar built, I am all pro radiusing the fingerboard.  The standard fingerboard is flat.

640mm or 650 mm?
Regarding 650mm or 640 mm guitar construction, keep the following rule at hand: If the distance between the tip of your thumb and the tip of your little finger is equal or less than 9 in. when fully stretched, use 640 mm. Adapting from one scale to the other takes no adaptation
.