Seeing Sam’s crossover build thread prompted me to start one for my MA-D. I think my guitar is perhaps just ahead of Sam’s in Michel’s build queue. It seems that many folks here are familiar with Michel or have met him at B.I.G., so he doesn’t need introduction. For those who are less familiar, doodahdoug provided a great summary in
this thread.
I met Michel at the Fretboard Summit in Chicago last year and got to see and play his “
apprentice guitar” that he built during his stay at Ervin Somogyi’s. In addition to being a fantastic luthier, Michel is simply a wonderful person—very humble, soft-spoken and fascinating to talk to.
Onto the build. I was originally thinking of pretty standard woods (European spruce over rosewood or perhaps ebony, which Michel uses frequently), but when he got back to France and sent me the link to his wood selection, I went in a completely different direction. I settled on a top of Tunnel 14 redwood:
with koa back and sides:
Michel will use a piece of the spalted koa on the headstock.
The build has been coming along—here are a few shots of the back in progress:
There’s also a cool time-lapse video of Michel carving the back braces that Michel posted on instagram. I’ll see if I can link to it here if this doesn’t work:
https://www.instagram.com/reel/CrBft...c4MmM1YmI2Ng==
I know Michel is quite busy and hasn’t been taking a ton of progress photos, but I will post more as I get them.