Jim Fleeting Guitars: Bolivian Rosewood OM

It’s been a busy few weeks. Here’s the latest custom acoustic, fresh from my guitar workshop:

Plenty of bear claw in that Sitka spruce top, not to mention lots of mellow bass and clear, ringing trebles. A great piece of wood.

The top is Sitka spruce; the back is Bolivian rosewood; the ebony bridge and fingerboard are both bound with high-flame koa. That’s koa on the headstock, too.

This two-piece rosewood back has a great bookmatch (a mirror image, straight down the centre). I love the look of sapwood. That’s the live part of the tree – and in rosewoods it tends to have a lot of contrast with the heartwood.

The neck is a five-piece laminate construction: Honduran mahogany, purpleheart, sycamore, purpleheart and Honduran mahogany again. Between the purpleheart and mahogany there is also a contrasting ash veneer. Quite a complex thing to put together! The heelcap is koa, with Grover machine heads installed. I normally use Waverly machines, but this was a customer preference.

This is a very art deco guitar, and I wanted to reflect this with the bridge design. It is bound with koa and inlaid with the crest of Essex, in mother-of-pearl. Both myself and the customer hail from a fantastic part of Essex, so the inclusion of our native seaxes seemed fitting.

What do you think?