In 2014 I did a Kickstarter campaign in hopes of getting my name out there in the world a bit more and decided at the last minute to offer an *over-the-top* custom build for anyone who was willing to have me make a truly unique custom guitar. On the second day of the campaign, there was a gentleman who decided to go for it and I was excited to move forward with this truly unique guitar build. To this point of my guitar building career, I have done all the art myself on all of the inlays, but through my journeys, I met an amazing local artist by the name of Stan Morrison, who draws the most amazing fantasy art I have ever seen, so I ended up commissioning him to draw a couple dragons fighting on a fingerboard. It took me a few weeks to get his drawing into a format (in Illustrator) where I could somehow turn it into an inlay. Lots of time was spent selecting the perfect materials for these 2 dragons that spanned from your more common materials, like mother of pearl, abalone, etc. to dyed burls and I even used 14k gold for the eyes of the dragons. The wood is stunning in its own right, as it is salvaged burled redwood from trees that were around 2000 years old. Finding that wood in a thickness that would be thick enough to make a carved-top would be even more of a challenge. The client was having dinner with a friend while visiting South Africa. They were eating Abalone and he decided to ship me shells from his meal! This particular abalone wasn't the type that's normally used for inlay, as it was very thin, but I managed to cut out a small diamond shape and incorporated it into the trussrod cover above the number 18. All in all, this guitar has been an amazing journey and sounds and plays phenomenal.
Testimonial coming soon!