It is not particularly flexible or lithe. Yes, it will cede to skilled hands, but not without careful negotiation. Working with old growth Brazilian rosewood — dried in the air instead of a kiln — demands patience and more than a bit of intestinal fortitude.
Choosing the right wood for your guitar is where my process begins — I can’t bring myself to just pull pre-selected, pre-cut boards from a shelf. I examine grain. Check the tap tone. Search for tiny flaws. Find the piece that’s just noodly enough. All to make sure the wood is the perfect fit for the tonal and visual personality of your guitar.
A color finish can be used to mask flaws in the work or the wood. And when it’s too thick, you’ll pay a price every time you play a note that’s a bit muddy or flawed That’s why my finish work is painstaking. I work very hard to ensure the right thickness — enough to protect the instrument but not so much that it suffocates the sound. Yin and yang. Sometimes it seems like the whole process is that way.
Everybody asks for it. You know, “Low action, no buzz.” The holy grail of string height. It’s just the kind of challenge I appreciate. (There’s also that obsessive-compulsive thing again.) Measure the string height, set the string height. Play it. Measure again, set again. Play it again. And so on. Does it take a while? Sure, and so do a lot of things that are satisfying.
Sometimes it might even be a bit of my knuckle or a chunk of my thumb. But mostly, there’s my belief that a guitar made by a single set of hands has personality and performance that an assembly line can never deliver. If you’d like me to create an extraordinary guitar for you, contact me.