29th February 2008

Avalon Guitars

A Tribute to Belfast

I've always had an interest in sea-faring stories, it's hard not to when you come from a long line of fishermen and lifeboat men from Donaghadee; my great grandfather and his boat were both drafted for transporting troops in WW1.

But let's talk about this special guitar. Well, we were contacted by Colin Magee from the Belfast Nashville Songwriters Festival to build a one-off guitar that had some feature or design that would represent an aspect of Belfast, I put this idea to our craftsmen and one of our luthier's, and Belfast man, Mark Lyttle quickly drew the headstock inlay showing the Titanic and one of the H&W cranes, we all agreed that what better testament to Belfast history than ship building, after all we were the best at it! And that was it ... decision made.

Next was choosing the materials and get the job done.  We choose various types of Mother of Pearl, Bone, Ivoroid and Ebony for the inlay and gave the task to one of our best craftsmen Balazs Prohaszka, a Hungarian guitar builder who has been with us for 5 years, artwork and design flow through his veins so he was the natural choice for the job.

All in all, the inlay took over a week to inlay starting at the bottom with the waves, gradually adding piece by piece until the task finished.  Each piece was hand cut from raw material to fit.

2008 is a big anniversary year for us, 20 years of making some of the worlds finest hand made guitars and only a couple of months ago we were awarded "guitar of the year" for our new Americana model and then to start 2008 with a great commissioned piece such as the "Belfast" guitar well ... we're very happy as you can guess.

Best regards, Jim Black, General Manager

Avalon Guitars, www.avalonguitars.com