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Old 10-21-2020, 07:47 PM
BlackKeys36 BlackKeys36 is offline
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Join Date: Apr 2020
Location: Rockwall, TX
Posts: 259
Default 40th Birthday Present - Kinnaird Build - Deep OM

Howdy!

Like most of you, pretty much everything I was looking forward to this year was Covid-cancelled and the most recent example was my 40th birthday trip to Costa Rica that was supposed to happen a couple of weeks ago. When I found out about 6 weeks ago that CR wasn’t allowing Texans in I was pretty bummed but at the time was following a thread on here where another AGF member was doing a student build at Kinnaird Guitars in Nacogdoches, TX. I responded to his thread a few times and he DM’d me pointing out that the class wasn’t far from me (I live East of Dallas), and recommended that if I was interested I should reach out to Steve and Ryan. I did so, and about a week later we had dates booked for me to come out and build a guitar.

I’m sitting on the couch at my family’s cabin in the woods about 30 min from Kinnaird as I type completely worn out 4 days into a 5.5 day build. I have almost no internet, but am going to try to get the first day posted here and take it from there.

Before I start, I will say that Steve and Ryan are an absolute pleasure to work with, are more knowledgeable than you can imagine while still having a rare humility about them, and are extremely skilled craftsmen. I am relatively new to smaller luthier builds, but have been around a ton of very nice guitars in the past 20 years and can tell you that if you haven’t played a guitar built by these gentlemen you owe it to yourself to do so. I have now had the honor of playing a half dozen of their creations and it is shocking what they are able to coax out of their impressive tonewood collection.

This student build is a rare combination of you building an acoustic guitar in a week with 50+ years of building experience looking over your shoulder and doing everything they can to make the final product amazing. It is obvious that they take a ton of pride in the quality of anything that leaves their shop but are still making sure that I am the one building the guitar. I won’t get into details on the price, but I can tell you that it is fair enough that I would pay it for the experience itself and the fact that I will be leaving with an incredible playing and sounding guitar made of premium quality tone woods is just a bonus. They still have a couple of slots open for student builds next year and have accommodation options/recommendations if you aren’t lucky enough to have a family place nearby like yours truly. ��

Next post will start the pics and story, but first, here are the woods:

Top - Lutz Spruce



Back/Sides - EIR (cool color; will finish Pinot Noir-ish)

__________________
- john

If anyone has ideas for case storage once your kids' closets and under their beds are full I'm all ears.

Last edited by BlackKeys36; 10-23-2020 at 06:53 AM. Reason: Fix wording
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