The bright sunny spot in my otherwise horrid day yesterday were some photographs of the lovely new guitar in progress that luthier Shelley Park in Vancouver BC is making me. Her guitars are the best, as is she!
See parkguitars.com
I used to own and play her 250th guitar, one of her Favino-inspired Montmarte models which I received in 2011. It was always a little but too big for me from the start and became impossible to hold unless I played it using the proper Django Reinhardt slouching posture, seen here when he first appears in this old movie - click the link to watch it on YouTube (I know that it says Video Unavailable in the box below). Enjoy!
I sold that one last spring to a player in New Jersey who collects and plays Favino and Favino-inspired guitars. These are generally larger bodied and a but looser braced and have a bit more sustain and a tiny bit more dreadnaught tone color, rather than the snappy SelMac guitars like the ones Django played. Like many modern makers few really understand such great makers like Shelley and how her guitars really sound and form their opinions from discussions online (same for me and my flutes really). He was expecting sort of an indistinct “hybrid” sound.
I usually carefully select strings individually and “voice” the guitar to my preferences and Shelley’s guitars work well with that approach. Even with the usual “du jour” set of Argentines that I put on it just before sending, he reported that this guitar knocked his socks off. A person listening in another room wouldn’t be able to tell the difference, except maybe in projection. A 70 year old Favino has slightly more projection than a 10 year old Park Montmarte. However, in 60 or less years hers will improve. and surpass the Favino.
The new one is one of her smaller bodied Encore models in solid East Indian Rosewood and a slightly antique-stained Spruce (I don’t know which type), Curly Koawood Bindings and Trimmings, and a Honduras Mahogany Neck. It will have the same 660mm scale and narrow neck profile as #250 for my smaller hands. The body is also about 8mm thinner from front to back lessening the trauma on my shoulder. There are a few other ergonomic details as well as the Soundport on the upper bout which functions as a Monitor with much of the sound directed right at the player’s face. These also more or less function as a larger sound hole with greater projection and volume, while maintaining the superb tone quality generated by these guitars.
Shelley’s are really some of the very best out there and she is one of the few luthiers making these who bend the tops in both the X and Y directions making these a true arch top. This increases the pressure and steepens the angle on the bridge giving these guitars less sustain (preferred in this style of jazz) not to mention the tone qualities.
Shelley’s guitars need No Improvement. This one however has become a platform for testing an idea that I have had since early in my instrument making career based on some research I heard of in 1982. For now we are calling this experiment “Secret Sauce” as it could be an abject failure. I expect the results to do the opposite, or at least make no difference. It may function in the same way as letting the guitar age for 70 years. Or it may be a huge transformation. We will know soon when she gets the guitar set up to play.
No more details and we may end up keeping this secret for decades, or reveal it in a few months if the results warrant it. That will be up to Shelley even though this was my idea. She’s the one making the guitars after all!
My last guitar was numbered #250. As a fellow instrument maker such numeric milestones have some symbolic significance and I was loathe to give that number up. I asked her how close she was to #500 and she has tentatively reserved that number for me for a future guitar that we may design together, based on the cheap 70’s vintage Japanese “Decca” guitar that my friend Michael Korchonoff and I modified into something like a Django-style guitar. For my new guitar she bent some rules as far as numbering is concerned (I stopped numbering mine at 400) and went for a new numbering format bordering on Irrationality. More accurately, we incorporated an Irrational Number. Thus the serial number will be:
”250 √-1” as in “250 times the Square Root of Minus One”.
The formula is explicitly stated on her maker’s label inside the guitar. If the secret sauce works as we expect, guitars with this feature may simply use “i” after the numbering sequence. That is the international symbol for √-1. This irrational number cannot possibly exist in nature in our 4 dimensional universe, but it is absolutely necessary for Quantum and Astrophysics, computer science, mathematical research, etc. Shelley does about 10 guitars a year on average and mine would probably be numbered around350. As a fellow instrument maker I get special perks from my dear friend! The last time we visited she sent me home with one of her amazing tenor Ukuleles. See https://www.facebook.com/MoodyvilleUkuleleCompany/
Shelley will FedEx it down. I’d love to go up there and pick it up, take her out to a favorite restaurant or food truck, etc. (safely done of course). But with last week’s climate change -enhanced Atmospheric River and the new one headed towards us this weekend, all of the Canadian trucking has now been diverted down to Eastern Washington and then up I-5 from Seattle. The Truck Customs facility at Sumas was damaged by the deluge and so everything is going through the Peace Arch crossing in Blaine. I suspect it will be like the week of the Winter Olympics with hours of waiting to cross. I’ll let FedEx do that for me instead and see Shelley in the spring - especially so that she can see how the sound evolves on this experimental guitar.
Reminds me - I picked up #250 a week after the Winter Olympics ended. There were just 2 cars ahead of me. My car was empty and brand spanking new. I was profiled as a drug mule and inspected and interviewed inside. They were not convinced that I was just there for the afternoon to pick up a guitar and head back for the last ferry to Kingston and they actually called up Shelley after I showed them the cashier’s check and everything, websites, emails. She yelled at them, saying “LET HIM THROUGH YOU IDIOTS! HE IS BRINGING MONEY TO CANADA!!!”
I got to her workshop during a driving rainstorm and knocked on the door. She opened the door and I said gruffly “Here. Take the money!” She slammed the door on my face, and then immediately opened it with a big grin. Us instrument makers like to get the transaction unpleasantries out of the way as soon as possible.
Today started out right after 6 hours of decent sleep while a new recording and recent performance of Nixon in China by John Adams played quietly through my ear buds (yes - I sleep to Opera, a habit I adopted on long bus trips across the country in the 1980s thanks to the invention of the Walkman). I snacked on some Tcho dark chocolate (Banana Nut) and some yummy Pinot Noir from Underwood that comes in a can at TJ’s. At 4:30 AM. I am about to move my car up to the shop after breakfast and unload the heavy tool parts and the exercise and weight lifting will help with my sore muscles. I then have my last keyed flute order to inspect, and then box up for shipping. Happy Turkey Day tomorrow. We are having a Tails and Trotters picnic roast braised with root veggies and the few chestnuts that we got this year from our trees. Casey