Well, there's very little as exciting as opening up your Inbox and seeing something like this:
I was actually near the end of my day, hanging out with my wife watching some TV (I seem to recall an episode of
Being Human?). In any case, the show went on pause, impending disasters from sensitive werewolves and reformed vampires aside.
As some context, I had sent Jeff a few pictures of his own guitars, and basically told him that I really liked the reds and oranges of good old Brazilian, I liked spiderwebbing and color striation, but that I didn't care for lots of wavy dizzying stuff. I liked "stripes" of color, if you will.
Think about this; it's a pretty specific description. As I'd found out with Ray, who has great connections, finding this sort of wood isn't trivial. But here, in my inbox, I had three apparent candidates. Now I had to wait for the images to download; it was a long 30 seconds or so.
And then, I had three stunning options from which to choose. My jaw dropped, I began texting my buddy, and shoving my iPhone in my wife's face, all while grabbing my iPad and MacBook Pro (Apple stock, anyone?) to get better looks at these gems.
Here was the first candidate. I immediately knew that I was dealing with some special wood, from a luthier that had an extraordinary stash:
I thought this was cool stuff, and my wife and I both commented on what a unique set of wood we were viewing.
There were originally two other sets, but those have been lost in the Internet and over time. In any case, I wanted to remove dead links, so hopefully this thread will make some sense again.
Wow. I was in shock. It would take some time before I made any decisions, so I'll leave you all for now with these pictures, which I suppose may be illegal in some states. Pure lust-worthy Brazilian, if you ask me.
And just as a closing thought, keep in mind how specific my criteria had been--red and orange, color striation, spiderwebbing but not tons of wave, big enough for the larger, 16"+ bouted BK--and Jeff easily pulled out three sets from which to choose.
Yeah.
More to come on what I chose, what I did to re-confirm my choice, and why PhotoShop is a wonderful thing.
-B