Ulma has been making music for a long time. Longer than me, anyway. You see, she used to be another instrument. Long ago in central Ontario, the Mason & Risch company felled mighty elms for the strong structural members of their pianos. Now the elms, and the company, are an echo of their former glory.

But this one lives on. A century spend in a parlour has made the wood dry and stable, and surprisingly resonant; upon stringing it sang out so clearly it almost seemed to remember its former incarnation.

The body was designed to be as comfortable as possible, with a radical offset-angle wedge cross-section and scooped back. The neck is bolstered with stripes of black walnut and hidden carbon fibre bars, and topped with an ebony fretboard and stainless-steel frets. The delicious pickups are "custom '61 PAFs" from Tone Emporium. The headless hardware is a Jcustom fixed bridge with their dual-function headpiece.