Folio

I'm not gonna lie, I am a little suspicious of people who don't read books. I am also a little suspicious of those who don't enjoy music. All my suspicions and nearly everything I know about building musical instruments went into building "Folio", made from one of those boxes that looks like a book, the sort where you can hide a flask or special treasures on a bookshelf and be rest assured that no one is going to pull it off the shelf and look inside.

It's worth looking inside this one, though. Once you get past the magnetic closures that secure the lid you will find inside the box you can find a death's head moth medallion mounted on red oak, and just below the medallion is the title of this tome on a wooden plaque. You can also see all the bits and wiring that have gone to make this something special.

Four golden soffits cover the sound holes on the cover and frame a pearlescent white humbucker with a strong, stentorian voice. For the first time on any of my builds this humbucker has coil splitting wired in so you can change the tone and bite on the fly as well as tone and volume controls that help dial the sound in.

The neck has a maple fingerboard is a sixty centimeter diatonic scale based on a Thai phin, with abalone dot markers in a fretboard pattern inspired by grotty Soviet guitars. The action is super low and the layout is ideal for improvisation, trills, and hammer-ons and pull-offs.

The headstock is suggestive of a leaf and is painted a color shifting green and gold with subtle red undertones that appear in certain lighting conditions. The truss rod cover is laser cut engraved maple. There's a bone nut, of course, and specialized golden hardware features throughout this build, all of it intended to match the book.There's always something to look at no matter what angle you see this from!

This build is strung with Stringjoy 44/33/25 strings that are tuned to EAE. This is a full octave lower than the traditional Thai phin this is loosely based on and is well suited for improvisation, the blues, and whatever else comes to your imagination.

Serial number 2605064, handcrafted in Las Cruces, New Mexico.

Releasing June 12th.