The idea behind my Heritage Series guitars was pretty straightforward: one county represented by one guitar. But then I come across a client whose family has such deep roots across an entire section, that it doesn't do it justice to represent just one county.
The woods used in this guitar tell the story of a family history that spans across all three panhandle counties and stretches back before statehood. They bring together both halves of a family heritage founded securely in faith and rural Oklahoma community.
The piano bench sat in front of a piano in a home in Beaver County where the daughter learned to play. It then followed her to Texas County where she raised her own family. It's the bench where she sat and learned to play hymns to help feed not just her own faith, but her community's as well. And this is where her grandson remembers seeing it as he was growing up.
The barn wood section comes from his maternal grandparents' land in Cimarron County, where they settled just before Oklahoma was granted statehood. Family pictures show generations working the Oklahoma soil with horse-drawn plows and building a life rooted in faith — a simple life with God at the center.
In horticulture, a scion is produced when a living shoot is taken from one plant and joined to the rootstock of another to grow something new. That's what is represented in this guitar — two families with the deepest of Oklahoma roots joining together and extending those values farther into the future.
Here are the specs:
- Body constructed from piano bench (poplar with mahogany veneer) and barn wood
- 5-piece maple/wenge neck
- Richlite fretboard
- Kluson tuners
- Noiseless pickups
- Wilkinson bridge
- Bone nut
- CTS pots
