'Ebony'

A couple weeks ago, I got a call from a Jimmy Barnhill in Birmingham, AL.  He had bumped into my site and after seeing 'Plum Crazy' (the six-string I use for my business card logo), he just had to have it.  Sorry, I said, "It's gone.  But, I can create something similar."  We kicked ideas around and he settled on a three-string electric with mag pickup and pinstriping on the face, and he wanted my logo as big as possible on the back.

I chose a out-of-production Tatuaje cigar box for the body (I got several of these rare creatures rat holed for  future builds), because they are just the right size for a guitar and the basic design is clean and easy to work with. They're just cool looking boxes and they resonate very well.

A red oak neck with Spanish cedar lamination on the headstock kick off this little devil. The headstock is a reduced version of a Strat, so it will fit well with the overall design of the 24.5-inch scale three-string.  The fretboard is oiled Ziricote wood with hand dressed stainless frets.  The nut and saddle are Corian.  The bridge and tailstock string retainer are hand formed Ziricote to match the fretboard.  Sealed Gotoh style tuners stretch the strings to an open G tuning.  And, the magnetic pickup is a hand wound number created by my friend Roger Berry of Hazelhurst, MS.  The grain in the exotic Ziricote wood is magnificent, and it's very hard wood, so perfect for a fretboard.

The body is sprayed with  black enamel, and the four-color pinstripe job on the face of the body is hand painted (at 72, I guess I still have a steady hand when I need it).  Light and dark magenta base colors with teal outline and gold accents are complimentary and look pretty good on the black background.  The logo on the back of the body is laminated onto a thin piece of maple ply, cut out on my scroll saw, and glued off the surface to give a three-dimensional effect, which I think looks pretty good.