This guitar has a Torres seven fans bracing pattern with open harmonic bars. What a warm, lovely voice, right out of the gate! The basses are very cello like and the trebles are very clear. It has, as is customary with the Nouveau Nylon model, a K&K dual source pickup system.

These shots are quickie shots done tonight; it was just strung up today. A photo shoot is planned for tomorrow in daylight and more photos will be on the main site soon.

In this last photo you can see at the top of the soundhole the K&K mic that is part of the dual source pickup system. Also visible is the beautiful grain of this fabulous Cedar soundboard.

The Sweetbriar “boat” is sitting in its mold in the vice. The next step is to start working on the soundboard.

The back and sides on this ukulele are made of Black Limba.  It is in the “boat” stage now, having the back and sides glued together. It also has its kerfed lining glued in and its neck and tail blocks glued in place.  Kerfed lining is very unusual for ukuleles, as is the beveled back strip and the carefully carved back bracing.  But James is clear that he wants the same level of quality and attention to detail that he uses when making Russell guitars.

The other two ukuleles being made at the same time are not in the boat stage yet.  They are both being made of Peruvian Mahogany of a grade and beauty that is difficult to find.  They both have delicate back strips made of Maple and Mahogany.  I will post photos of those backs soon.

We are still talking about model names and have come up with some good ones, but nothing has stuck yet.  When the right names come for the models, we will know it and will share them here.

On Thursday, January 15th, we drove down to southern California to go to the 2009 NAMM show.  What an amazing two days we had at the show on Friday and Saturday. We saw old friends, met new friends, and made many new business contacts for guitar making, plus enjoyed seeing people we already enjoy wonderful working relationships with. We were amazed at how few steps we would take and then would run into someone else we knew.

This photo shows James with Eric Schoenberg at the Luthiers’ Consortium booth shared with Todd Taggart’s Allied Lutherie booth. We have been invited to join the Luthiers’ Consortium at the show for a few years but so far have not dived into this opportunity. Some of the guitar makers in the Consortium build Schoenberg Guitars for Eric, and some of the builders sell guitars through Eric’s Schoenberg Guitars shop in Tiburon, California.

Eric Schoenberg is a wonderful story in itself, or in himself, but I’m not going to tell it here, not at this time anyway. Suffice it to say that Eric has a handful of builders making his beautiful Schoenberg guitars, and James is one of them.  You can learn more about Eric and Schoenberg Guitars at the Schoenberg Guitars site.

At NAMM we enjoyed talking with other hand builders, guitar wood suppliers, amp and pedal makers, strings makers, and a multitude of other music biz people. There is just no end to what you see and whom you meet there. In fact, we also enjoyed meeting some performing greats such as Leland Sklar, Monte Montgomery, and Jeff Baxter. We caught Monte performing both Friday and Saturday at the Alvarez booth.  We talked with him on Friday, and on Saturday I just happened to have my Nikon with me, so I got some nice shots of Monte performing.  We also have shots of Leland (and he got fun shots of us too). Later we came across Swedish jazz guitarist Andreas Oberg performing at the La Bella Strings booth and I got some good photos of him.

We saw our friend Carl Verheyen perform at the Vox booth on Saturday and enjoyed an extended visit with him on Sunday on our way back to northern California. James and Carl spent some time talking about details on the Nouveau Nylon guitar James is making for him.

We came back so jazzed and inspired in terms of our guitar making and also our music. Some of these conversations will stick with us for a very long time. I notice I have been practicing guitar and singing more lately, and the shop is on fire, if you know what I mean.

James has been to NAMM many times, but this was my maiden voyage.  I loved every second. We will be there next year, so if you’re there, look for our Russell Guitars badges, and we’ll talk guitars, music, and creativity.

The Russell Guitars News Blog is up! Here we will be posting news and updates from the Russell Guitars shop in Northern California. This is a site addition we have envisioned for some time, and we are pleased to see this goal coming to fruition.

We are extremely happy that James Kendall, aka JTk, updated his Ginseng Coffee WordPress theme and feel it is an excellent fit for our site. Thank you so much, JTk! Layne spotted this theme months ago and knew it was the one, and now it has been further developed and is even better suited for our needs. We, of course, will be customizing it somewhat, but are very pleased with its basic design, layout, and capabilities. James does beautiful work.

So here we are on our new blog!  Welcome to Russell Guitars News!

And just in case you area wondering about this photo…it’s a shot of the back bracing carving process on our new slack key model. The back and sides on this guitar are flamed curly Koa. We will post be posting photos with all blog posts, so there will be many guitar making and shop shots to come.

- James and Layne Russell