We like to stay away from flat-sawn wood in guitar-making because it tends to be less dimensionally stable and will shrink or swell to a greater degree with humidity changes. The main exceptions are when we want something to bend easily (guitar linings) or because the flat-sawn wood is nicer to look at. This is the case with bird’s-eye maple. I have included a photo, not of the beautiful look of good bird’s-eye but rather the endgrain showing the tree rings so you can see that the wood is totally flat-sawn. If you cut the same maple radially as you would any other wood for guitar-making the eyes don’t show up. You are looking at a the side of the guitar with the binding rebate cut exposing a clean view of the 2mm thick back. You can see fine dark lines in the maple which are horizontal – just the opposite of the dark vertical lines you see on the end of a typical top or even on the inside of the soundhole.

I love this wood. I know, I have published pictures of similar wood in the past but I just can’t get enough of it. This might well be the last set that I have with this wonderful colour and texture. I took this little video just to show what this guitar would look like with no binding and purfling. Who needs extra decoration? Well, actually there is a good reason for those elements. The binding protects the endgrain of the top and back from changes in humidity and at the same time fromm knocks and bumps which can also cause cracks. Furthermore, softwood takes bumps very badly no matter what the grain orientation. The purfling, by sticking to the top on the long grain, holds the binding much better than if the binging were only glued to the endgrain of the top. This is achieved by the staircase cut shown in the diagram. The purfling gives long grain for the binding to stick to. The endgrain is only a problem at the endblock position but as the binding ends there it is very important that it does not unstick.

I am writing this today, and not on December 31, in the hopes that 2020 will not take any more guitar-makers. This has been a rough year and I think our quota has been reached. These are the sad passings that I have heard about this year. Ricardo Louzao, thought by many to be the greatest guitar-maker in Argentina. Fritz Ober, one of the best from Germany. Daniel Friederich without a doubt the best that France has ever produced. In Granada too we are missing Juan López Aguilarte, one of the founders of the Granada School as defined by Eusebio Rioja. Pedro Maldonado was born in Loja in the province of Granada but spent his working life in Málaga. What a year!

I was lucky enough to meet Juan here in Granada a number of times as he had a good relationship with my mentor Rolf Eichinger and I met Pedro through my friend José Ángel Chacón one Christmas in Málaga. I know the others through their guitars and reputations only but I am grateful for their legacies.

I am not sure where the future of music lies but you can be pretty sure that it is neither on vinyl nor in a jewel case. I was looking over the CDs I have that have been recorded on guitars I have made and find that some of them are not available for purchase in CD format. Spotify and the digital music purchase companies are certainly going to be the norm in the near future so I looked there to see what I could find. It’s kind of funny that all of my models are represented here. My old concert model, the Torres SE153, the Santos 1924 and the Antonio de Lorca romantic guitar. My new concert model is represented in the recording by the Korean artist Honam Ji below. The following albums are available on Spotify and so I made a playlist all of the pieces called it Johnguitar.com. https://open.spotify.com/playlist/7aSRrSUzgGYduRBUz362Hz?si=bnk9HgTCS7qKHA862TdeKA

I know that there are more CDs either professionally produced or “homemade” using my guitars and I hope that you will all let me know when they are available. Here are some examples of recordings which have not made it to the digital platforms. Actually, I have been unable to find a way to get these physical CDs even.