• David's J6 body mated with the Petteway Cutaway from Larry's Sifel's guitar
• Western Red Cedar top
• Old-growth Sapele back and sides (I said mahogany earlier, we'll get to that in a sec)
• Bi-directional body taper
• Rosewood bindings
• Ebony fretboard with no inlay
• Mother of pearl fret markers
• Ebony peghead with abalone inlay logo
• Ebony pinless bridge
• Manzanita rosette
• Slightly longer 25.7" scale
• 1 7/8" nut
• Wider 2 3/8" string spacing at the bridge
• Special bracing system
• Gotoh Super 510 gold-plated tuning machines with black buttons
• McIntyre dual-source pickup (GF-30 Feather and SBT-04 soundboard transducer)

It's a total hotrod. And it sounds freakin' majestic.

A note on the back and sides. Initially I had talked to David about making a guitar that was similar to a classic Lowden O10/F10 in cedar/mahogany. That was sort of a point of origin for me. A kind of Pierre Bensusan/Don Ross thing (even though both play other guitars now) in a slightly more contained package. But I wanted some other, cooler custom stuff, as noted, namely the body taper. David had some difficulty getting hold of a AAA-grade piece of mahogany large enough to do the body - the wedge simply takes more material. And despite mahogany being a relatively inexpensive tonewood, because of that very fact, it's becoming more rare (and will likely go up in price). David mentioned having bought a bit of "old-growth" sapele and wondered if it would be okay with me if he substituted it for the mahogany we had spec'd. To be honest, at first I wasn't too crazy about the idea. While sapele has in recent years begun to be used by various builders as a "replacement" wood for mahogany, it has gotten the - probably undeserved - reputation as a "cheaper" wood. But... I already had a spruce/sapele 12-string I liked and I had played one of David's spruce/sapele baritones that was phenomenal. David stressed that the sapele that he had acquired was incredible stuff, definitely a cut above. I figured I probably couldn't go wrong, and the worst case would be, well... I wouldn't take the guitar if I didn't like it.

As you can see, it's beautiful and it sounds, to me, bigger and better than any mahogany guitar of its size I've heard. I would also say the guitar has slightly more resonance and sustain than other mahogany instruments I've played. It's a very sweet-sounding guitar as well, if you can imagine it. And Good Lord - the low end. Massive.