The Odin Guitar

I'm working with Ryan Josal of Seattle, WA on an exciting new project called "Odin," based on the norse mythogy god of the same name. The guitar is being built by John Thayer of J Thayer Guitars. As some people know, I work with a lot of luthiers both large and small. It's always great to work with a builders like John who is as passionate about his guitars as I am about my inlay work.

There are many challenges with this job. First was the subject matter. Did you know Odin rides an eight legged horse? Yeah, I didn't know that either. Try designing a horse with an extra set of legs, it's not easy. Plus, Odin travels with two ravens and two wolves, so there is a lot of elements that had to be combined into one flowing design.

The next challenge was the design of the guitar. It has a lot of angles and points as well as the pick ups and bridge take up a lot of room on the body. Getting all the elements of the design in place was tricky, but I did it. My orginal concept was to have the horse take up most of the body of the guitar, but I soon found this was impossible. The pick up holes and the bridge route did not allow for a design like that to look good. So I had to change the entire design to focus more on the are behind the bridge. Came out looking great though.

I don't have the guitar from John yet, but here is the artwork so far. There will also be a battle standard on the fretboard.

Artwork Begins

I will update this page with progress picture as they become available.