Gary’s Story
I looked for a long time for the right tiger-striped maple set for this guitar. I wanted the figure on both the top and back to have real intensity, and Sheyenne Serial #1 delivered exactly that.
The curly-maple top and back are finished in Black Gold. The solid Brazilian rosewood neck is exceptionally dark — so dark that when the guitar first arrived I thought Joe had mistakenly used Gaboon ebony. Joe told me it was the darkest piece of Brazilian rosewood he had ever seen.
Brazilian rosewood is also used for the fingerboard, headstock and pickup rings. Pearlworks created the boat inlays on the fingerboard and the sea-oats and compass-star imagery in the headstock, while paua purfling runs around the fingerboard, headstock and body.
Fralin Pure PAF humbuckers provide the basic voice, and I had Joe add a single-coil mode to broaden the range of sounds.
It plays exceptionally well and sounds great. More importantly, it represents exactly what I hoped the first Sheyenne could be — visually dramatic, beautifully made and still fundamentally a guitar I want to play.
