A feat as only Ervin could achieve. Modified Dreadnought #500, Ervin’s “Diospyros” (Latin for Ebony) guitar, is comprised of over 500 pieces of Ebony and Yellowheart in a tiled spread along the back and sides. The effect, to mirror the paving stones Ervin once saw in a photograph of a Mexican village street, is rendered by painstakingly inlaying irregularly sized and shaped tiles, each with purflings.
According to Ervin, it was “an anonymous street somewhere in Mexico, that was made of paving stones that had been arranged and fitted together by some past work crew. The stones were not fitted together in a grid pattern but were instead set in randomly as far as size and shape went. The entire thing gave a sense of Order in Chaos that very much appealed to me.”
The tiles (none of them perfectly square) are shaped to fit the exact curvature of the body—all 500 of them. Between the tiles, Ervin inlaid over 3000 “grout” segments of green veneers, and this doesn’t include the inlays along the back of the neck. For the top, Ervin picked out a pale European Spruce top and carved a pattern of 13 celtic hounds around the soundhole (eyes of Abalone, backed by handmade Japanese washi paper).
There simply isn’t anything quite like this anywhere else. We looked. It’s a pinnacle of the art form of modern lutherie.
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This is without a doubt the crown jewel of Ervin Somogyi‘s long and innovative career. This, his number 500 guitar, challenging this world famous maker to use all of his skills and imagination. The result is a museum quality, heirloom guitar at once superbly playable and extremely valuable. Inspiring to look at, to hold and to play. | Scale Length | 25.125 in |
|---|---|
| Nut Width | 1.75 in |
| String Spacing | 2.25 in |
| Woods | Spruce - European, Ebony |
A feat as only Ervin could achieve. Modified Dreadnought #500, Ervin’s “Diospyros” (Latin for Ebony) guitar, is comprised of over 500 pieces of Ebony and Yellowheart in a tiled spread along the back and sides
This is without a doubt the crown jewel of Ervin Somogyi‘s long and innovative career. This, his number 500 guitar, challenging this world famous maker to use all of his skills and imagination 