Susuki
A quiet and bucolic valley in Taiwan, ringed by mountains lush with waving Miscanthus (aka Susuki) grass, was the happy place that the player can visit in their mind every time they pick up my latest guitar.
The brief was to create a small archtop guitar with the string feel and amplified tone of a full-size one. We opted for a headless design inspired by the earlier Madeleine. For Susuki however, it has a standard (parallel) fretboard and a more robust neck attachment and tuning tailpiece.
That tailpiece and bridge are another example of my 3-d printed steel/bronze wrap-lock tuners. In another use of cutting-edge technology, the fingerest with roller controls under the edge has a chassis made of one-piece 3-d printed plastic. Furthermore, it is printed as one piece with the pickup ring, enabling it to be fully floating as it’s fastened to the body with the pickup ring screws. For appearance’s sake, it’s topped with ebony to match the fretboard.
To cope with Taiwan’s subtropical climate, the neck is made of torrefied birdseye maple with a two-way truss rod. The body is a lovely slice of faux-bookmatched black cherry, with a hand-carved soundboard of well-aged european spruce.
By combining that careful woodwork with a Bareknuckle “Manhattan” humbucker-sized P-9o in conjunction with Labella Black Nylon Tapewound strings, I think the tone has lived up to expectations: warm, smooth, and sophisticated.