A guitar made with the oldest workable wood in the world!
Read Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5
The Ancient Kauri Bailey Bootlegger Custom guitar is now finished and has already flown the nest. Sandy came to our ‘Guitar Sunday’ at The Firehouse to collect it. I used it to check the sound for the PA and ended up going through my entire repertoire of solo guitar pieces. I really didn’t want to stop playing it which is always a good sign.
I was surprised straight away after first stringing it up how even and well balanced it sounded, not to mention full and loud, but without being brash. A lovely rich warm mellow tone with each string as clear and well defined as the others. If there were guitars 40,000 years ago is this what they might have sounded like?
When I first plugged it into the tuner I was amazed how low the bass E string could be tuned and still sound great- most guitars lose it around low C or B but this one remained constant- it would be a wonderful guitar for altered tunings.
I have thoroughly enjoyed making this guitar. By a miracle of preservation in a peat bog this piece of wood has existed for many times longer than the whole of recorded human history. Touching, smelling, seeing and hearing (tasted pretty good too!) the Ancient Kauri during the build gave me a strange but direct link to a long forgotten past. I felt a little bit like I was waking it up from a very long sleep…kind of humbling to know how it lay silent for so long and now it sings…