Catalunia, Spain, is the homeland of some of the world greatest artists: Miro', Dali', Gaudi'' and of course Barca football club one of the world most winning soccer teams in history. It is also the home of my dear friend guitarist Josep Mercader a guitar enthusiast with many years passionately in love with the classical guitar. Josep commissioned a custom guitar that required that I lifted all our construction standards and incorporate all our latest breakthroughs in order to achieve this work of art. She has a combined Sinker Redwood Spruce mixture for the double top, Ultra enhancements like the soundports on the bridge and the elevated fingerboard.
Artistically speaking, she incorporates over 270 hours of work to complete the marvelous mother of pearl and abalone inlay work she displays from the tuner buttons all the way down to the violin tie and armrest. The set of Blackwood is fabulous and I asked for a special set that displayed  beautiful savvy. Blackwood has a unique voice that no instrument can compare to. It is as human as a guitar voice can be. Powerful and with a tremendous presence. On this set a wonderful deep reddish coloration seems to want to come alive from within the wood fiber.  Asturias felt like a whole new piece and with all that she's fresh out of the lacquering booth, the separation of voices is perfect and she possesses a myriad different sound colors. The Ultra constructions with the special inner strutting, 3 soundports on the bridge and elevated fingerboard add the extra ease of play that every concert player dreams of.  Finally, I am proud to have served Josep one of the best Bellucci guitar ever to come out of my shop. Felicidades mi amigo ! 

Sinker logs, 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.

The double top with the 9 braces Hauser fan, was developed and introduced by  Master Luthier Manuel Contreras the II at the end of the 70s and reached its peak in the 80s. In this Variation of the Double top, a second top is located halfway between the main top and the back. It is held in place by means of little Mahogany bridges located above and below the second top along the inner part of the sides (frames 1 & 3). The second top rests on the upper bridges and once it is glued on each little bridge (frame 2), a second bridge is glued on top of the preceding corresponding bridge below the second top (frame 3). This second top vibrates a fraction of a second after the first one creating an immense sustain and punch using the air moving inside the sound box and thus creating a multiplying effect of the sonorous waves.