Edwinson, Coming Up For Air

[TomB'sox]

You have been a busy fella Steve! Did the new shop come with elves that finish things at night? I love the gear motif and how they interlock, great inlays!

More, more, more, please.

[Joel Teel]

No elves, Tom...
But there is a Troll who mostly works at night out there in the shop when he's done with his day job 😂

Originally Posted by TomB'sox

You have been a busy fella Steve! Did the new shop come with elves that finish things at night? I love the gear motif and how they interlock, great inlays!

More, more, more, please.

[B Merewether]

Steve... I guess with all your attention you are losing track of where we all are... not surprising ... but its all good.

We are from Michigan and have really enjoyed the trip to Florida each winter.. and I get to see the shop... again... really great.

My Edwinson SteamPunk Guitar is (as mentioned) getting all the attention lately... its a keeper.

Steve and Joel are really great people.... and like so many on this forum really exceptional guitar builders.

Havefun all... Bruce

[theEdwinson]

Originally Posted by B Merewether

Steve... I guess with all your attention you are losing track of where we all are... not surprising ... but its all good.

We are from Michigan and have really enjoyed the trip to Florida each winter.. and I get to see the shop... again... really great.

My Edwinson SteamPunk Guitar is (as mentioned) getting all the attention lately... its a keeper.

Steve and Joel are really great people.... and like so many on this forum really exceptional guitar builders.

Havefun all... Bruce

Hey, Bruce, Whoops! I am what you might call "geographically challenged". I thought Michigan was in Wisconsin! Heh heh- kidding... But yeah, I got that mixed up because I do have two or three Edwinson owners in Wisconsin. And now one in Michigan! Or, was it Minnesota...? No, you said Michigan, right?

[theEdwinson]

I really appreciate everyone posting comments on this thread. It's great to be part of the conversation again.
Since this thread is a show 'n tell, featuring some of the guitars I built during my incognito phase, I want to show you the first left-handed guitar I've built. First, an observation or two about the lefty-righty guitar thing...

I have several friends and colleagues who are luthiers, and are naturally left-handed. Aaron Andrews, my friend, mentor and shop partner for twelve years out in Seattle, and Joel Teel, my new partner in crime here in Fairhope, to name two of them. Both taught themselves to play guitar right handed; which seems to me to be a daunting prospect, to say the least. If I try to flip a guitar around in the left-handed orientation, it feels extremely clumsy and strange. But Aaron and Joel, and many others who are natural southpaws, have been able to program their minds and hands to play right-handed with natural ease. All respect to these guys.

That may be a big part of the reason that you just don't see many left-handed guitars. I've heard that about 30% of humans are left-handed; but only a small percentage of them play guitar in lefty orientation.

An even smaller percentage of left-handed guitarists play with a left-handed orientation, but on right-hand-strung guitars. Elizabeth Cotten, the iconic American folk guitarist and author of the old standard, "Freight Train" played this way. To me, that just seems diabolically difficult.

My client for the guitar pictured below, Earl K. (Hawaii) has played this way for many years- fretting with right hand, picking with left, but on right-hand-strung guitars. He's had a couple custom shop Collings guitars built this way. So, when this build commenced, Earl asked me to build his Eclipse this way, a left hand guitar, strung right-handed.

Then, about three weeks into the build, Earl asked me if there was any way I could make it a conventional lefty. He had recently bought a left-hand Gibson something-or-other, and was going to have it converted to right hand stringing... but he started playing it as is, and he says it felt so natural, that pretty soon, he had determined that he was going to re-learn his entire repertoire with lefty-strung guitars. Now that is a colossal commitment! Re-programming forty years of muscle memory- are you kidding me?

Fortunately, I had a feeling about this from the beginning, and I designed this guitar from the get-go to be a switch-hitter. My top bracing is already a symmetrical "Radial X-fan" pattern; and I also made the first ever symmetrical Element style bridge for it. I don't slot the bridge for the saddle until it is glued on to the soundboard. And the left-handed nut was not an issue either. So building Earl's Eclipse as a straight-up lefty was right in the pocket!
Earl plays a LOT these days, like five or six hours a day (!!!) and has already made major progress. I predict that, not having to deal with all the work-arounds in his previous style, he will have fantastic success with this new approach. I am really glad that Earl decided to do this.
Earl is also having his Custom Shop Collings guitars converted to standard lefties too.
My only regret with this build was that I was unable to play anything coherent on the guitar before I shipped it out to Earl.

Without further ado, Here are some photos of Earl's Eclipse OM-LH guitar:

[IMG][/IMG]


The woods on this guitar are: Mastergrade Brazilian Rosewood back and sides; A Tunnel 14 Redwood top (which came from the next railroad tunnel up the line from the famous Tunnel 13); Honduran mahogany neck; Marbled Gabon Ebony fingerboard, bridge, front and rear headstock plates, bindings, and arm and rib bevels. The purfling all over the guitar is a three-layer, cross-grain Zebra Wood with red veneer lines. There's a segmented back inlay and matching end graft with Zebra, Koa, dyed veneer lines, ebony, and copper and Paua elements. The rosette is the "Element asym" style. Also, we decided on Koa and Zebra-inlaid upper and lower bout sound ports. Once again, Earl's Eclipse features an Omega open headstock, with Gotoh 510 Mini tuners. We swapped out the metal tuner buttons for a set of beautiful Madagascar Rosewood buttons from LMI, which arrived after I took these pictures.

Here are a few more detail shots of this guitar:






Oh, and another thing we switched out is, the bridge pins are now Vintage Camel Bone with Paua dots. The bridge pins pictured here are included as a spare set.
Thanks for looking!

[Jamiejoon]

Steve, I love the back strip and end graft. Beautiful and creative!

[theEdwinson]

Originally Posted by Jamiejoon

Steve, I love the back strip and end graft. Beautiful and creative!

Thanks, Jamie. If you like, I can do something similar on your guitar. This is a theme I'm currently using a lot, as you'll see on the next posts. I get my inspiration for things like this from other builders here on the AGF.

[Nemoman]

Originally Posted by Jamiejoon

Steve, I love the back strip and end graft. Beautiful and creative!

Ditto that!

And the red veneer lines really work so well and pull everything together!

Totally stunning guitar, Steve!

[Jamiejoon]

Originally Posted by theEdwinson

Thanks, Jamie. If you like, I can do something similar on your guitar. This is a theme I'm currently using a lot, as you'll see on the next posts. I get my inspiration for things like this from other builders here on the AGF.

Steve, I reckon by the time my build comes up you'll be doing even cooler stuff.

[TomB'sox]

Holy cow buddy. Are you kidding me? That guitar is out of this world. Everywhere I look there is something so cool to see. ONLY YOU can make bling like this out of wood for the purflings. No shell for you, the woods are even blingier (I made that spelling up for sure)! That back strip is out of this world and the inlays around the sound ports, super cool. AND lets talk BRW. Man is that a beautiful set.

Steve and I had conversed a little in the past about this guitar and I am soooo happy I got a chance to see it. Are you sure you did not take some sort of Zen master class with the Dali Lama or something this past year of silence because you have become some sort of wood sorcerer in your absence. I know we have something coming up at some point, I think I want to request another year's departure before you do it though because who knows what you will come up with!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[theEdwinson]

Heh heh heh... Tom, you are too kind! I'm glad to be able to show you this guitar too. The Brazilian rosewood is pretty special. What awesome wood to work with! I figured, since Earl decided to pull out all the stops on this guitar, I would too.
It sounds pretty good too. The Tunnel 14 top is just as old and just as tonally rich and complex as the famed Tunnel 13, and I have a good source for more of it.
I have another BRW Eclipse coming up that is going to be pretty impressive too. The soundbox is already built; now I am installing the inlay and working on the neck. But I can't take credit for the inlay- we sub-contracted that out to people who are way more talented than I am. I'm working on this guitar now, along with another one with "Tree" quilted Mahogany and Lucky Strike Redwood top. It's an embarrassment of riches, having these woods to work with. Stay tuned- more coming.
Next I will show you MY guitar- a Cocobolo/Sinker redwood, multiscale Eclipse. It's a better guitar than I deserve, but I'm trying to practice playing a little every day so I'll be at least somewhat worthy of it.

Thanks again, Tom. Your comments really made my day!

[mb propsom]

Gorgeous aesthetics and execution as always, Steve.

[theEdwinson]

Okay, if you will indulge me, I'd like to show you the guitar I built for myself... But first, a little of the back-story.

Before I got my start as a guitar maker back in 2000, I was desperately in love with modern acoustic fingerstyle guitar music. I say "desperately", because I really wasn't a very good player, being entirely self-taught and not all that bright or informed about music.
Personal limitations aside, playing the guitar was what I lived for. It was my fantasy oasis. I was sort of like a hunchback troll, skulking under a bridge, yearning to be a leading man, a movie star in Hollywood.

I never had much natural talent at playing guitar, but from constantly listening to acoustic guitar wizards like Michael Hedges, Pierre Bensusan, Martin Simpson, Ralph Towner, and the great pantheon of modern and traditional acoustic guitar Masters, and hacking away at it night after night after work, some of that sound and technique eventually seeped into my inner psyche, and then into my hands, and I actually became a pretty good player... for awhile.

Then, my true destiny came knocking at the door, and I became a luthier.

The more I worked at my Craft, the less and less I played. How much guitar energy does a person have in any given day? When I first went full time into lutherie, I was in the shop 60 to 70 hours a week. And loving every minute of it! I became even more obsessed with making guitars than I had been with playing them. And truthfully, I had more native ability at building guitars than than I ever did, playing them.

Being a musician, for me, was like a passionate, but long-unrequited love affair, with a Goddess who existed in an entirely different and higher octave than me.
Long story short, I wasn't a good enough player to satisfy my Muse, so I married her sister instead.
And I was happy with that.

But still I yearned for that ineffable feeling that you can only get when you play a guitar, and you fluently express your soul. I remembered so many of those moments of perfect flow... fading off into the distance...

Eh-em... I digress.

Okay, I'll save the rest of that story for a future memoire, and cut to the chase: I finally decided to build a guitar for myself, in hopes of rekindling my love of playing. Holding nothing at stake. After all, isn't that the ENTIRE point of the guitar in the first place? Whatever-- I just needed a guitar of my own. My fragile mental health depended on it. It had been a decade since I had one I could keep for myself. So right after I moved to Fairhope, I decided I would start a "stealth" build. MY guitar.

Two months ago, I finished it, and this guitar is pretty much my ideal guitar. Everything I ever wanted in a guitar. She sounds wonderful, plays like a dream, and makes me smile every time I pick her up. Currently tuned to CGCGCD, this guitar, affectionately named "Cinnamon Girl", inspires me to play every day again.

And even though my hands are pretty beat up and gnarly these days, after forty-plus years of pounding out a living with them, I'm gradually getting my skills back. I'm diving into the deep end, exploring open-tuning, modern fingerstyle idioms again, and feeling flashes of that ineffable delight again, when a particularly spicy turn of musical phrase comes out, unexpectedly, just like in the good ole days, in the early 90's, the heyday of my playing experience.

Here she is- my Cinnamon Girl. MY guitar.





Abbreviated Specs: Back and sides: Cocobolo Rosewood; Top: MG Sinker Redwood; Neck: Honduran Mahogany with Flamed Rock Maple center lam; Bindings, bevels, fingerboard, bridge, front headstock: Macassar Ebony; Purflings, throughout: Flamed Pyinma; And some other cool woods mixed in there too.
Multiscale, 25"- 25.5"; Scoop cutaway, with Macassar Ebony; Omega MS headstock with Gotoh 510 Mini tuners... And so on. Now. if you'll excuse me, I need to get in a session with Cinnamon Girl before I go to bed.

Thanks for looking!

[theEdwinson]

Originally Posted by mb propsom

Gorgeous aesthetics and execution as always, Steve.

OMG, Michael, I sure miss you, and the good times we had at Healdsburg. How are you, what are you building these days? I hope you are well and happy and prosperous... Your guitars are extraordinary- let's see more of them!

[BrunoBlack]

Very beautiful creations!