In the spring of 2005 my wife and I realized that we were approaching our 100th guitar. As we only produce about fifteen instruments a year, we began thinking about making a special guitar as a celebration. We envisioned something that we could use as a display instrument. One of our ongoing concerns is to design instruments that are works of art without being gaudy. We want all of the elements to flow together, without allowing any one part to overshadow another. We also enjoy using the traditional materials, such as ivory, rosewood, ebony and mahogany, and go to great effort -and expense- to obtain these hard to find materials from legal sources. The traditional materials really do look and sound better.

We have some very nice Brazilian rosewood in stock, and a few other unusual woods but none of these really excited me for this project. In July a wood dealer sent me some photos of some quilted Bubinga that he had obtained. I liked the looks of it but by the time I got to him, the wood that he had left didn't seem as nice as in the photos. I discussed this with him and he produced one set from his 'personal' stash. This particular set was what interested me, and he sold it to me along with some other woods. After we got home I sanded the wood to more clearly see the figure. The set began to grow on me, and I decided that it would be the #100 wood. That's how this project got started.

We use Adirondack (red) spruce for our faces [tops], bracing and interior blocks so I began looking through our stash. Though we only buy master-grade wood, the quality is still subjective - and I wanted a face set that was cosmetically spectacular. This is tough with red spruce which is typically color streaked and has uneven grain widths. I did find a face that seemed to be the match for our back and side set. Now we were rolling. I picked out a really nice chunk of mahogany for the neck, ebony for the fingerboard and a piece of Brazilian rosewood showing nice spider webbing for the bridge. The "woodpile" was now complete.

   

For the design of this guitar we chose to use my large jumbo pattern. We decided against using a cutaway as we wanted the guitar to look very traditional, but we did add a full armrest bevel. We also designed the guitar with a 14-fret neck and the longer 650mm (25.6") string length. The overall appearance was much like a scaled-up version of the familiar OM design. With the design complete we began working.

My wife Virginia does most of our shell cutting and pearl inlay designs, so at this point we needed to get her started on the pearl work. I drew up an abbreviated 'tree of life' vine, and then got Virginia and artist friend Roger Eudy to critique and tweak it. When we reached a consensus, Virginia stared cutting.

   

I decided to trim the guitar with Brazilian rosewood. I also use purfling lines between the trim and the back and side woods much as classical guitar makers do. As I wanted a similar look in #100, I had the idea to use a three-ply line of black-yellow-red, the black being next to the Bubinga and the red next to the rosewood binding. To utilize this same format on the edges of the face, I made up some marquetry using this same black-yellow-red pattern, divided by alternating pieces of Bubinga and rosewood. As this feature turned out very nicely, I'm inclined to keep this idea for future 'extra special' instruments. As we usually bind our fingerboards, I also used a stripe of yellow-red purfling to set off the rosewood binding from the ebony of the fingerboard. For the dots on the edge of the fingerboard we used green snail set into gold rings. We used this motif also on the ivory strap buttons and bridge pins.

For the butt strap I used a piece of ivory bordered with the black-yellow-red purfling, and repeated this treatment for the heel cap on the neck. We were also able to use some of the Bubinga on the back of the peg head which shows off our neck volute and continues the color theme of the instrument.

   

I really dislike using plastic but we chose to use a clear acetate pick guard. I don't much care for the look of pick guards, but this is my compromise for a necessary evil. We finished the guitar with oil varnish and mini Schaller tuners with mother-of-pearl buttons.

We are very pleased with the end results. The very hard and reflective Bubinga produces a wonderful sound with many rich overtones, much like the better rosewoods. The overall look of the instrument is spectacular without any of the design elements overwhelming one another. While #100 is an extra special guitar, the same care and attention to detail goes into all of our instruments.

Best wishes,
Ken and Virginia Miller