I think "The Ullapool Orsino" is rather a good name. "The London Orsino " wouldn't work quite so well, nor "The Newcastle Orsino". Or is it just me?

I rather like "The Accrington Orsino" though, so if anybody ever starts a guitar festival in Accrington, please let me know?

Anyway, moving on.

This is a very well-known guitar model, but with a little extra added to make it "special".

For this one, we've used Claro Walnut, grown in the UK, for the back and sides instead of the usual Brazilian Mahogany. The two timbers are fairly close in density and stiffness, so I anticipated the sound being the same warm deep resonance as the mahogany version.

The top, which defines a large part of the Orsino sound, is Red Cedar, the neck is one piece Mahogany with an Ebony fingerboard

A simple, but really special guitar.

There is no need to attend the festival if you want to buy this. It's for sale NOW at £4,200, and ALL the proceeds will go to the festival - SOLD

More about Ullapool later on. Tickets are nearly all gone!

The Ullapool Guitar Festival

"- and it was magic. Just a beautiful guitar. Someday I’ll get one -"  

An extract from  “Premier Guitar”-  a review of the bands third  Album “Skinty Fia”-

 "- both guitarists reached for a 12-string acoustic on a pair of songs: Curley on the aforementioned “Jackie Down the Line,” and O’Connell on the smoldering groover “Roman Holiday.” Oddly enough, the Fontaines acquired the guitar, a beautifully finished Fylde custom 12-string, from British crooner and troubadour Richard Hawley, who met the band on a recent jaunt in Sheffield. “We were struggling to find a really nice sound on a 12-string,” O’Connell says, “so it was like, let me just text him. He was really excited about being a part of it and lending us the guitar, and it was magic. Just a beautiful guitar. Someday I’ll get one, but you can never play it live because it’s just too precious.”

Richard told me this recording was happening at the time, but being the age that I am,  it didn’t really register with me. I’m often surprised  when I hear that one of our guitars has been adopted by somebody famous without me knowing. 

Of course, I’m now expecting a phone call and considering that  'Jackie down the line' has 96 million listens on Spotify and  'Roman Holiday’ has 91 million, maybe more than one. 

And Richard has a new guitar that I haven’t told anybody about yet: I wonder who will want to borrow that?

"These two black Fylde guitars are possessed by the gentle spirits of greatness"

And here is that new guitar.

We made a six-string Black Orleans for Richard in 2021.He was so pleased with that it inspired a Baritone version.

This has a 27-inch scale length, tuned B to B. although Richard will no doubt play around with that tuning a little.

And, of course, it's black!

It wasn't at all easy to make,  I really don't want to use plastic for bindings or purflings, but there' s a massive issue in using wooden purflings amongst black stain . This time it wasn’t me that undertook the serious amount of extra work involved, I remember how hard it was the first time and I'm not sure if my eyes and hands would be up to it again. Fortunately, I have Paul as my eyes and hands now . Paul sealed all the black and white purfling lines with superglue and cotton wool buds before painting up to those same lines from the other direction with black  spirit stain.  Not even a tiny overlap allowed.

Then more stain again and again until black is the colour of my true love’s hair. It isn't actually, it's sort of dark auburn with shimmering lights and hints of mystery, but that wouldn't work on a guitar.

I haven't explained about the chequer inlays, I made them from Ebony and  Jelutong (what a lovely name!) , but there wasn't enough  of the original inlays left, so I had to make another little "batch to match". It might have been easier to make a whole new batch.

The fingerboard inlays are Pearl Diamonds. We still fit it those by hand, no CNC. I think Alex would rebel if I replaced him with a machine. Mind you, a machine would have a tidier bench. I'm not complaining, Alex comes second in the untidy stakes, I win every time. My defence usually involves pictures of Lloyd Loar’s work bench and  "A messy bench means busy hands", I read that somewhere.

Richard loves this guitar and has already used it on a major project, hopefully I'll be able to tell you all about it soon. 

A short extract from Richard …

"These two black Fylde guitars are possessed by the gentle spirits of greatness…my favourite modern guitars by a long long chalk Rog ... they give me a sense of balance both physical and mental that only vintage ones have done before…"

So that's ok then. Thanks Richard

If I didn't have bills to pay, we'd spend a lot more time making "one off" instruments like this, with more or less a free hand in all the specifications. All we need is some rough guidelines and the excuse to explore the deepest corners of the wood store. Even I am surprised by what I find there sometimes, and I put it all there!

So here we are, a long scale bouzouki, strung in unison pairs. We have used Lacewood, sometimes known as London Plane, which is a variation of Sycamore , so it's not exactly a "rare" timber, but large pieces without barbed wire or lead shot buried inside are becoming rather harder to find. The top is Cedar, so all the materials are from the softer, lighter end of the tonewood list, and I had in mind the very open growly sound that I've come to expect from a bouzouki with such a combination.

So here we are,  this is what it sounds like, helped along by Ben's new Custom Falstaff.
Just for fun I put Slängpolska into Google Translate, and it came back as Slängpolska. Hmm, that doesn’t help much. 

Ben's Website

Only two weeks to go now, I think we'll be ready.

I showed pictures of these four guitars last month, before the final assembly , along with four that were already finished.

The idea this year is to display the widest range of materials, styles and features that we possibly can, and to demonstrate some of the rather interesting ideas that we’ve used for particular customers over the last 12 months or so.

A shallow bodied Falstaff, made from Indian Rosewood and Adirondack Spruce with a 13-fret neck join!! Having made a rather lovely 13 fret guitar for Martin Simpson recently, I want to show the idea to the professional players that gather in the Highlands at this time of year, and of course to all the serious musicians that make the journey to support them.

A really lovely little guitar that we’ve built to test the unusual wood that I described recently.

It's Brazilian Rosewood "but not as we know it". In its raw form it was difficult to describe, the colour was more typical of the Purple that shows in some Indian Rosewood, and several knowledgeable people have been puzzled by its density, grain features and texture.

I already know who I want to play it on video.