So the time has finally arrived and my ticket has been punched in the Baranik build time machine! This guitar has been awhile in coming both in reality and in my dreams.
I first met Mike back at the SBAIC in 2016. I played his guitars and came away impressed, but wasn't in the position to buy or commission one at that point in time. Fast forward a year to Santa Barbara 2017 where I was able to play several examples of Mike's Meridians, the model I had determined would work well for me. They all sounded fabulous to my ear--I was sold, and put down my deposit then and there.
Mike told me his wait time was about 18 months, and I had told him that I was in no hurry at that point. My anticipation has really been building over the last 6 months, until finally my wife and I visited Mike at his shop in Mid-October. Up until that point, I had planned on using cocobolo for the back and sides along with some of Mike's fabled Colorado blue spruce for the top. It wasn't until he pulled out some of his sets of Machinga (also called Manchinga) that I was captivated with one of these sets and decided that that was the route I wanted to go.
I've been wanting to use malachite in a custom guitar build for quite awhile and Mike was game and seems the perfect luthier to pull it off. Green has always been my favorite color, and Malachite is also a small town in Colorado near where my parents lived and retired to for the last 13 years of their lives. I found this piece of Malachite down in Tuscon at the gem and mineral show while visiting my Aunt and Uncle down there earlier this year. And the Colorado connection also continues with the Colorado blue spruce...it all seems somewhat cosmic to me...
Besides, it's not everyday you get to use the alliteration of Malachite Machinga Meridian in your build thread title!
I shared some of my ideas with Mike while we visited at his shop, and we came up with a plan for many of the details of the build. I really love Mike's aesthetics and his graciousness at incorporating some of my ideas is really exciting. He is truly a master craftsman, and I feel blessed to have him creating this guitar for me.
Enough of my babbling--here's some pics of the woods to get this party started...
And the master himself!
Thanks for checking it out--more to follow soon...