All Ryan guitars are built using only the finest materials. The quarter-sawn silky soundboards and the rich Indian rosewood backs and sides are carefully chosen for acoustic properties and visual beauty. In the small details such as the rosette, the vibrant paua abalone shell is hand-matched for color and pattern.From the Sitka spruce top with its brightness and clarity to the cedar top with its responsiveness and warmth, each soundboard is worked to bring out its full acoustic potential. Whether you choose the elegant "standard" guitar or adorn the instrument with options (cutaway, dramatic woods, special inlays) each instrument is set up for your optimal string action and neck adjustment before it leaves the workshop."I was a carpenter about the time I got out of high school. Building houses, carrying two-by-fours and I was also a guitar player. That meant at some point that those two loves would merge. I had kicked around the idea for awhile and saw a hand-built guitar for the first time and knew I wanted to build a guitar for myself.I intended do something unique from the very start. I knew that to be able to compete my guitars would have to have a very clear focus, and for me it was clearly going to be a fingerstyle guitar. I was also lucky enough to come to the attention of many of the world's finest fingerstylists. Designing the instrument from the ground up to be a fingerstyle instrument and thinking in really innovative ways has been the most important."Kevin Ryan