Let’s start on the ‘Zouk!

With the polish on David’s mandolin being left to harden, work has started in earnest on Adrian’s bouzouki. This will be Adrian’s 3^rd instrument; someone coming back for another instrument is, to me, the finest compliment that I could have. In fact looking at my current waiting list, out of the next ten instruments, five are for returning clients; for which Amanda and I am extremely grateful.

The neck blank is pretty much complete. As the neck will be long and slender (660mm scale length with 17 frets clear of the body!) I decided to make it from maple- it’s laminated with black and mahogany lines; this will complement Adrian’s other two instruments. Carbon fibre also adds stiffness and additionally there is a dual action truss-rod.

The back and sides are Indian rosewood. Back in the late 1970’s when I was at the London College of Furniture, four of us, Bill, Maz, Walter and myself, decided to buy some rosewood- not so easy in those days. Off we went to an importer’s yard somewhere near the docks- this was when London Docklands was synonymous with ships and the import and export of actual physical goods and not banking and electronic trading ! We bought a number of huge boards and struggled back to college on the tube. After a gift of a bottle of whiskey to one of the technicians we managed to get our wood re-sawn into usable sized pieces! Well then, this rosewood back and sides is my last remaining set!