Friday, October 21, 2011

The Real Nitty Gritty


Those of you who are acoustic guitar fans to the extent that you know something about the boutique makers of such things probably know who William "Grit" Laskin is. 

He is a player, a maker, and he also does inlay work. Want to see some really fine stuff, check out his inlay page. 

I can't afford his base prices, much less the custom-inlay on top of that, and his waiting list is a couple eons long, but if I win the lottery? I'm going to see if I can buy somebody's place in line ...

Check out, for instance the portraits on the headstock above, that's Stephane Grapelli and Django Reinhardt. And what is really impressive is that's all done in inlaid shell ...

1 comment:

Mike Byers said...

Several years ago, Laskin had a series of article about how to build a guitar in "Fine Woodworking". I'm fairly good with wood; furniture, cabinets and the like are no problem, but after reading Laskin's articles and seeing his work, I figured taking up brain surgery would be a bit easier than trying to equal this. And as I recall, he plays pretty well, too; I seem to remember he even plays the pipes on one of Stan Rogers' recordings.