The Oystercatcher #40

While my shoulder needs time to heal and get better I might have a chance to catch up with some of the work I have done in the last year but didn't find the time to share. I have to admit I am guilty of using my spare minutes rather often passively watching something instead of working on my own content. So lets change that a little.  

This is a 000-28 style guitar which is my "Oystercatcher" model and it is very dear to my heart. The model name occured during a vacation at the north sea on a beautiful island. One of the local birds there is the Oystercatcher. I was working on my first guitar with this new OM shape and somehow the long red beak and the black and white stuck with me.

000-28 means that it is a short scale of 630 mm with the herringbone purfling around the top and a rather simple three ring rosette. The woods used are salvaged redwood for the top and Malaysian blackwood for the back and sides. Fingerboard, headcap and bridge are ebony, the neck is Honduran mahogany.  Very classy in certainly not the typical wood combination for this model but I do not intent to build a Martin copy here. I was looking for my own interpretation of it.

And it worked out. There is a certain elegance in the tone, maybe because of the heavy and dense Malaysian blackwood. A little longer attack and sustain that lends itself beautifully to the immediacy of the redwood. Nothing dry or boxy but very open sounding for an instrument of the size, again I think the redwood helps with this, and lots of overtones in all registers.