African Blackwood Concert Guitar. November 29, 2011.

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African Blackwood B&S, Lattice Braced Double top V1, 280 year old Sinker Redwood top. African Padauk bindings and Luxury marquetry on all sides. Inlay work on Ebony/African Blackwood fingerboard, and headplate. Luxury marquetry. Pearl details on Ebony bridge, violin tie and Handmade rosette. Ebony armrest, Lute type soundport on the upper bout, 640mm, Gold plated carved tuners with Ebony buttons & Pearl inlay. Pearl mark on fret 3, 5, 7, 12, 15, 17 and 19. WORK OF ART!
Here is a MASTERPIECE that sent waves of admiration throughout my studio the minute she was presented prior to my playing her. This African Blackwood guitar will simply blow you away !! What a sound ! What a presence ! Her beauty is irresistible and I embarked on a wonderful journey that took 310 hours of intense labor and the passion of true artists of luthery and guitar playing. African Blackwood is what I usually classify an "Axe breaking wood" because it is so hard (The hardest wood on Earth) that is literally destroys some tools and knives need constant filing to work it. It is the wood used in most wooden wind instruments like the Oboe, clarinet and is usually labored on rotating tools. It is a different story when you try to bend it or try to route it for bindings, inlay etc. It is resilient, classical and elegant. It withstands hard work and is 100% reliable. An amazingly tight grain pattern that resembles the fur on a Black Panther. I mounted a 280 year old Sinker Redwood top to make her PERFECT. Powerful yet clear and tremendously expressive. The bass is powerful and I can hear the double top adding the extra punch and sustain. Lattice on the other hand, passes her a magical clarity in every single voice and produces perfect separation. The Sinker top adds sweetness and a maturity to the sound that it resembles the human voice. An everlasting sustain puts her apart from all the other guitars you may have heard to date. Clarity in the trebles and a myriad harmonics to make you feel like in Heaven. As I play the Air by Bach and Morricone's Chi Mai, I feel like I can exploit every phrase in the music and the guitar is there to make all my musical wishes come true... She's very easy to play thanks to the stylized neck, radius very and low action.

The lattice is a concept based on the A frame of grand pianos. The back and sides are kept rigid by means of a sturdy A shaped frame and the top is thinned as much as possible to allow the top to vibrate generously. Lattice delivers a lot of volume a tremendous clarity.

650 mm or 640 mm?
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

ORDER THE SIGNED POSTER

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.

The double top V1

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.
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African Blackwood B&S, Hauser Braced Sinker Redwood top Concert guitar

Optional Velvet guitar cover (USD 35)

PROTECTIVE GEAR

These attractive hand sawn velvet guitar covers are very useful if you like to leave your instrument out of the case for long stretches of time. They are a great solution to avoid scratches during practice from the friction of buttons with the finish. To use it while playing, use it in the position shown to the right.
These are hand sawn by the wife of my Leather cases embosser.

Adjustable-saddle-bone
When ordering a guitar, every player will ask me to set the action as low as possible without any buzzes... Since every player applies different amount of strenght when plucking the strings it is impossible to set the action precisely to each player's will. The Spanish builder Fleta, had come up with this genial idea which consists of pushing the bone more or less into the groove on the bridge. The player would set the action to his liking and then either cut off the excess or keep it intact in case he decided to lower or raise the action depending on humidity conditions etc. On request, I can prepare a Fleta saddle bone for an extra 80 US$.

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