And so it was that I had a night out in Venice with my wife... to talk about guitars!

I was invited to give a presentation on what goes on in the weird connection between a luthier's head and his hands. Two old friends of mine planned a series of presentations on the value of artisanal work and the creative process behind it: boat building, hair dressing, wine making, beer brewing... and guitar making.
So, after leaving the kids with the baby sitter, we drove to Mestre to catch a train to Venice, and walked our way to Campo San Polo (thank you GPS!!!).

Merry Christmas everybody with this nice arrangment of Forbidden Colours from Matteo Gobbato. Played on his fanned frets Danube.

Another video of Stephen Bennett playing a classic tune on his Columbia. The audio quality is pretty good, the execution flawless and it highlights the clear high register and the round bass.

Here is a very nice report of the Maxmonte Antiphony on the chitarre.accordo.it website.

The report is in italian... put if you want to have some idea of what it says check out the automated translation by google: Maxmonte Antiphony

Friend Matt Thomas sent me this video where he is jamming with Stephen Bennett: it sure looks like they are having a blast! Stephen is playing a Maxmonte Columbia with cedar top and rosewood back and sides.

 For a more traditional look, white and iridescent.

 More delicate colors than the Paua and Blue Paua, the SGA has pastel reds and blues and greens. This is also a very popular shell and works beautifully against darker woods such as rosewood, western red cedar and redwood because it is lighter in color and the colors are not as dark or intense.

Possibly the most colorful and iridescent of any shell in the world. The greens (and many blues) are rich and intense. This selection favors blue hues.

So, what do luthiers do when (almost) no guitarist is looking? Of course they work their magic to make awesome guitars, search the world for the perfect piece of wood, study the properties of resonances and string tension and whatnot...

Here is a new video by my friend Matteo Gobbato, a nice arragement of "Clarity" by Zedd. Matteo is playing his fanfret Danube with an Italian spruce top and cocobolo back and sides.

It's my custom jumbo shape, with a nice Ryan style bevel and a deep reach cutaway, and a 25-26'' fanfret scale. Nice little details are a couple of custom inlays, stainless steel frets, compound radius fingerboard, buffalo horn nut and saddle, pinless bridge, Gotoh 510 tuners, carbon fiber reinforced neck, custom wood rosette.