• Thelma is for sale - SOLD
• Archie Fisher with Tony McManus. Will ye Gang Love
• Ben Walker. Gardens
• Will McNicol. Brachiating
• Used Walnut Alexander for Sale - SOLD
• The 25th Ullapool Guitar Festival. 2nd 3rd and 4th October  
• Jon Wilks and THOSE guitars
• Octavius Bouzouki for Sale - SOLD
• Tim O'Toole. The Rocks of Bawn
• Lisa Hannigan
• Fylde Guitar Goes to the Moon?
• Moon Dust

• Granny's Attic. Jack the Sailor
• John Smiths Falstaff
• Antlers in Orleans
• String Break
• Nick Hooper
• Dani Harris
• Tristan Seume and Daria Kulesh
• Sid Goldsmith. Tamsin Elliot, Rowan Elliot. A tune yet unnamed
• Topette. La Couturiere
• Jez Lowe. The Frozen Roman
• Canon in D. Double bass Korea
• Lee Child

I don't know Tim, but he does sing and play rather well, and I hope he doesn't mind if I use this video as a demo of an Octavius Bouzouki. The tone is quite typical of an Octavius, a lot less strident than many bouzoukis due to the guitar style bridge.

Well, it’s not a very secret garden, is it?  I can see it, and there's hundreds of people there, they found it ok. 

Lisa's Website

Not really, just kidding. We currently have a guitar stuck in the doom loop of USA imports and tariffs, on it's way to a very patient and understanding customer. A process that used to take 6 days is now nearly a lunar month, so we've been having a chat.

"Until I retired about 5 years ago, I worked instrumentation on the shuttle program and eventually did avionics integration on the Orion capsule. Now I’m trying to make up for practice time lost during 33 1/3 years of working on human space flight.

This is the Artemis II rocket on its way back to the vehicle assembly building to have a helium leak repaired".

I'm trying to imagine Jack Swigert during a Helium leak

Beep

"Houston, we've had a problem here".

Mission control all falling about laughing - "Stop messing about Jack"

Then Jim Lovell "Ah, Houston, we've had a problem"

More laughter

"Not you as well Jim, settle down all of you, now”.

Beep

That reminded me of a story I used in 2016. Another customer of mine had written a rather good book, based around interviews with all the men who had walked on the moon.

If Artemis works out, the book might be needing a sequel soon.

I've featured George Sansome so much recently that the newsletter seems a bit empty without him. It's not just him this time though, it's the full Granny's Attic. I do think they are good. They met at school and have been making music together since 2009. That’s pretty good going by the usual standards of band longevity.

Granny's Attic Website

I think this looks lovely. Getting a guitar to the almost finished stage is a major milestone and we can all relax a bit, but there is still a long way to go, even more when the customer wants a little bit of inlay.

Inlay is a lot more work than you might imagine. I started off assuming we would do this in Pearl but soon decided the inlay would be too fragile to be cut by hand, so I cut them from Sterling Silver before passing them to Alex to put them in place.

The picture is me imitating a goblin, next time I'll get an equally bad photo of Alex while he is cutting the recess into the fingerboard and we'll see how he feels!

The next part of the story isn't so nice. The guitar got lost in transit for over a week, which caused huge stress for Moira and me (and the customer of course).

But then - We had this message:

"I have some fantastic news… the guitar has arrived!
It’s an absolute work of art and is sublime to play. What a phenomenal instrument. All expectations have been surpassed — thank you very much indeed.
The wait has been well worth it.
Thank you again for everything."

Phew. You can imagine the relief.

We do get a lot of messages like that, ( not the lost guitar bit). I should probably feature them more often.

I think the Orleans is destined to be one of our more successful designs. It looks fabulous and it's so comfortable to play. We've tested it in several different versions now, and I'm waiting to hear Martin Simpson's conclusions when he's had chance to road test the one that we've just converted from short scale to long scale. Watch this space

This year, Tom has expanded the exhibitor list to 26 exhibitors, up from 17 last year, and he has performances from Toria Wooff, Adam Miller and John Smith. The evening gig alone is more than worth the ticket price so it has to be a good deal, but tickets are limited so don't delay.

Lots of guitars and lots of music!

Get tickets here

I have to keep reminding myself to include occasional older videos, I have a lot to choose from and many of them have good stories behind them as well as being excellent music. 

Nick is the extremely talented composer responsible for some of the Harry Potter film scores.

He discovered Fylde guitars via our lovely friend Gordon Giltrap.

More about Nick here

We attended Dani's Funeral two weeks ago. This article says all the things that anybody would say about Dani, so I won't add to that. The sun was shining, everybody wore something bright, the music was Remi's and the connections between friends and family stretched in all directions.

A very sad day. A lovely lady.

Click here to read the article...

I didn't know this tune had words. Tris usually plays it as an instrumental. 

Every time I feature Tris playing, I get an email from one particular fan in America, entranced by his style and technique, so of course I immediately forward them to Tris to try an embarrass him. Doesn't work. 

Tristan's Website

I could probably find some automatic way for YouTube to remind me when certain artists  produce new videos.  Until then I have to rely upon never ending searches and suddenly remembering  that  I haven’t heard from a particular person for a long time.

Sid owns the only "Nordic Mandola"  that we've made ( so far anyway)  and his previous video inspired  a lot of interest. Im amazed by those lowest notes.

Sid Goldsmith & Jimmy Aldrige Website

Any excuse to include acoustic bass.  It's a very slow dance!

Topette's Website

I think I’m addicted to Geordie accents.             

Jez's Website

I was looking for a video of bass with acoustic guitar and came across this one. I do like to "mix things up" a bit when I get chance, and I think this is lovely.

Ive often been asked if I’ve ever made a violin. The answer is no, and my excuse has been that it would take too long to learn and to gain a reputation. While I was watching this video, I couldn’t help thinking about how much physical work must go into making such a huge instrument.

I came to the conclusion that it can only be practical where you work with others, so that the young, fit apprentice will do a lot of the heavy work and leave the "Maestro" to do the more delicate stages. This also fits in with what I've been told by professional violin makers who have worked in the well-known studios and had it drummed into them that efficient working needs to be part of their skill set

Lee gave a very good talk at The Keswick Literary Festival this weekend and I had a quick word afterwards.

"Do you play guitar"?

"Very badly"

End of conversation.

I was going to swap stories of growing up in Birmingham, but there's still chance, as Lee has now moved to the Lake District!

Lee Child's Website