Tschernez

Greg’s father, Wasyl, had used solid Queensland walnut to build a massive feature wall unit for the family home in Slacks Creek during the 1970s. He cut, shaped, sanded and assembled the whole thing by hand, setting aside a few particularly special boards because of the rare fiddleback figure running through them.

Those pieces stayed with the family for decades. Greg had always talked about turning some of the walnut into a guitar one day, but the right opportunity never quite came along.

I’d known Greg since my days at Maton. I had helped assemble a custom ECW80C for him back in 2001, and years later he told me about the walnut and the dream he’d carried with it. Eventually he brought a section down from Brisbane and we put a fresh blade in the bandsaw to see what was hiding inside.

As soon as I sliced it into sheets, planed it and gave it a tap, I knew there were songs in that timber.

I used the fiddleback Queensland walnut throughout the guitar—not only for the back and sides, but also for the fingerboard, bridge, headstock veneer and several smaller details. The top is Otways-grown redwood sequoia, with an Art Deco rosette combining walnut, maple, redwood and paua shell. The African mahogany neck, ivory binding and gold Grover tuners finish the instrument without taking attention away from the family timber at its heart.

The voice of the guitar was just as special as the story behind it. It has a deep, piano-like low E and a natural resonance that seems to bring the whole instrument alive around that note. There are some guitars where the timber, design and construction all line up in a way that can’t really be explained by a list of specifications. You feel it as soon as you play them.

Greg drove back to Melbourne to collect the finished guitar, and I deliberately didn’t send him final photographs beforehand. I wanted him to open the case and meet it properly for the first time.