He seems to have a Roman-esque attitude in some respects and makes some counter-productive choices (like getting Brazilian rosewood for necks and then chopping most of it out to fit massive carbon fibre rods and tool-steel truss rods and a generally 'form over function' approach), but he's clearly a perfectionist and the instruments look flawless. I bet they play and sound wicked too... there are sound clips on there somewhere.
I don't know his prices, but I think somewhere in the region of $10k is a good start. He hs to pay for all that CNC gear somehow!
The inlays are awabi shell devil heads and the name Diablo in 18 karat gold. At first, I didn't know about putting devil heads on the guitar. I mean, hey, it's called Diablo, which I thought meant "Bull" in Italian. I didn't want anyone to think that there was any affiliation with any demonic creatures here. Oh no! Diablo was the name of a famous bull in Italy around 1877 I think. I thought up a bunch of cool sounding names. I thought of cars that sounded cool. Lamborghini Diablo. I thought, hey, that works great with Driskill. So, I found that the car was named after a mean Italian bull, Diablo. I thought, Driskill Diablo. That sounds nice. Later, I found that in most languages, diablo means devil. Not here but that is the connection that some people think of. Well, I wanted to make the devil head inlays not look satanic or anything for that reason. We found the Red Devil logo that looked very cool yet not evil. So, I did a similar looking head and it came out looking nice.
I would not worry about the fruitcake aspects Ash - most really good craftsmen have some sort of obsessive side or quirk. Hauser for example used to sit with his feet in a bowl of hot water, drinking a stein of Beer and listen to guitarists playing his latest guitars in.
In one sense it is that extra ability to envision things and to concentrate almost to a frightening degree while ignoring other realities that make these people what they are - there again they could just be plain nuts but who cares (certainly they don't) so long as they produce superb instruments.
gregtarr wrote:Just a thought. When Ash gets GAS, he can just make himself a new guitar/amp/what ever.
Actually, I get GCS (Guitar Creation Syndrome), and just like GAS the reality of it is mostly surfing the internet, drooling at guitar porn and designing things in Paintshop
The Ricky things in that other thread for example, are pure GCS and I've got as far as ordering some hardware and selecting a peice of flame maple for one of them...
BG... CNC is definetly on the cards, but still a few years away. Guitar capable units are getting closer to sane price levels by the month.
Ash, can you explain to me how the quilt gets as it does...and if the cutting of the wood impacts on this etc. Some of that maple is insane.
"Man is the most insane species. He worships an invisible god and destroys a visible nature. Unaware that this nature he's destroying is this god he's worshipping." - Hubert Reeves
Quilted maple comes from the new growth of the tree, in the case of maple, only the softer Western bigleaf maple and even then only in less than 10% of trees. The example above would be in the upper 1% of all trees cut. Quilt is only apparent on flatsawn wood, which comes with stability issues, so never buy anything with a quilted maple neck. I suspect quilting is a combination of compression and virus in the wood. It happens in lots of species including Kauri, mahogany and NZ beech.
Flame/curly/fiddleback maple is most apparent on the quarter cut face and is mostly due to compression under the weight of the tree as it grows. About 2% of trees cut yeild the wicked stripey stuff, but it mostly gets selected out for PRS et al before it gets out of the mill. Lots of local woods can do this too, but you never see them after the woodturners get their mitts on it...
But that doesn't explain how it looks like that...
The grain grows in a wavy pattern, twisting up and down, rather than in a straight line. The end grain absorbs more light than the face grain, so as the angle changes, the light reflectivity changes too. This is called chatoyance. Dyes and oils can be used to enhance the effect of the quilting and flaming.
Why thank you...very interesting. I have seen some curly Kauri now you mention it.
"Man is the most insane species. He worships an invisible god and destroys a visible nature. Unaware that this nature he's destroying is this god he's worshipping." - Hubert Reeves
@ash lol/RT "@ChelseaVPeretti Had fun in the Cinema Tent tonight w @adultswim @robcorddry #bonnaroo #fonz #hottubtimemachineintonationjokes #childrenshospital #mud #pee" //by @Jenesis
Take a look at Laurie Williams' guitars for some serious quilted Kauri. There are some links down the page that show a video of the quilting move as the guitar is tilted...
Fortunately I frighten technology 
