Claro Walnut Archtop Model1

This is an extremely old instrument, despite only just being posted in 2021, for a number of reasons. I built about 80% of this guitar about 15 years ago while working in the Myka Guitars shop. The combination of the claro walnut, bloodwood, African blackwood, and light (Engelmann) spruce at the time was my dream combination and I was building this guitar as my personal instrument. However, as they say with fantasies, they cease you be your fantasies once you attain them. This was the case here, although it was my dream combination at the time, as I got closer to finishing it my dreams had moved on. It sat in this partially-finished state for the better part of a decade. Rummaging around the shop I happened upon the body and neck and decided to bind it, set the neck, and finish the instrument once and for all. I did not however have access to my spray equipment at this time and outsourced the spraying to the only person I could find in the area; a hotrod pin-striper. He did his best, but upon returning the guitar admitted that guitars were way harder to finish than he had expected. The results were... less than spectacular. Distraught, not knowing what to do, the build again sat in this state for at least 5 years. In that time I met the extremely talented Chris Bavaria (previously of PRS) and asked what could be done to say the guitar. Sure enough, he worked his magic and brought the instrument to life like you see it today.

I kept the guitar around as a demo instrument for a few years after this. A friend of mine was looking to test out amps (he's an amp nut to say the least) and was borrowing my Tyler Amps JT-14 so I decided to bring along this guitar as the two are a match made in heaven. The next, and last, I saw of the guitar was when he dropped the check off and let me have it back for a few days to snap these pictures!

A couple notable details I'd like to point out about this instrument:
1- Although technically completed later, this guitar was the per-cursor to the Oval-Hole Acoustic Model1 posted recently.
2- Although a fully hollow, parallel-braced archtop guitar, the back is domed (not carved) like a flat-top acoustic. This allows me access to a greater variety of woods for archtop guitars and I find that the sound can be highly tailored to one's desires by making the back braced to be either reflective or sympathetic.
3- Although many people have since done "radial purfling" like the zebrawood seen here, I had never seen anyone do it before my mentor at Greenridge Guitars so all credit to the innovation goes to him.
4- The pickups are "Kritz Blower" pickups... which most people will have never heard of. Before I built custom guitars I bought 2 from the non-closed Kritz Guitars company. They custom-wound these rod-magnet humbuckers which sounded absolutely phenomenal in archtop instruments. When they closed up shop I loved the pickups so much I asked if I could buy out all their remaining parts stock. They obliged and now I wind them to their original specs for my archtops.