Gary’s Story
For Nik Huber’s 20th year, he created a very limited Anniversary Series: one prototype each of the Orca and Dolphin followed by ten matched pairs. Artistic Guitars took both prototypes and serial #1 of 10 of each model.
The Orca follows a Les Paul-like construction concept: a carved solid maple top laminated over a routed solid mahogany body. This prototype uses an exceptional burled-maple top, with an additional 6mm burled-maple piece inlaid into the mahogany back.
Maple purfling surrounds the body back, fingerboard edges, headstock and truss-rod cover. Dark Brazilian rosewood appears throughout — fingerboard, headstock, rear-headstock inlay, knobs, pickup rings, toggle tip and backplates.
All four Artistic Guitars examples were finished in Starry Night Burst. This first prototype, shown at NAMM 2017, carries the original shade. Nik changed the color formula slightly after the prototype; I prefer the original version, which makes this guitar visually unique among the run.
Because of the time pressure before NAMM, Nik did not install the planned fingerboard inlays. I later obtained the proper inlay set from Nik and had master inlay artist Larry Robinson install them into the already-finished Brazilian rosewood fingerboard with the frets in place.
It remains one of the most spectacular-looking guitars I have ever seen.
