Cool, but will it play?

Turning the discussion back to the meeting of guitars and art, two weeks ago I was invited by Ft. Lauderdale luthier John Dell'Isola to attend the Newport Guitar Festival. The occasion for us was the debut of a new model for John, which I had covered in hand-stained cowhide.

John is a relatively new presence on the custom guitar-building scene, but the reaction his guitars garnered from numerous seasoned players at the show indicate that he is off to a terrific start. He has had a vision since starting his business of making a leather-covered guitar. One of John's friends spotted my work at a nearby art festival, and passed my card along to him. We met and exchanged ideas, and agreed to try the concept out, the goal being to have a finished guitar done in time for the Newport show. Here, you can see the result.

The big debate among some of John's fellow builders as we got into making this piece was whether or not the leather "skin" would dampen the tonal characteristics of the guitar. The consensus was that the relatively porous cowhide would muffle the sustain. I chose a very dense, thin tooling hide for the job, and laminated it to the unfinished body with contact cement to minimize counteracting vibrations. I sniffed enough glue in the process to render me legally stupid for awhile, but it was worth it. The look on Josh "The Pitbull of Blues" Rowand's face when he test-played our creation at the show said more than any written gear review could ever express.