An Iterative Standard
When I first embarked upon this guitar building business with career intentions I was renting a house with a friend and machinist in Cookeville, TN. Ross was working towards his engineering degree at Tennessee Tech and I was helping in an organizational way with his effort to generate interest and funds for a linear engine generator he had designed. He called it "Elegy" and I thought that this was funny because I was familiar with that title in classical musical literature and it's meaning. Well, Ross got a job and family and, notwithstanding its merit, his engine will be not be "moving the world" anytime soon. So I decided to make Elegy the namesake of my main model of guitar, both as a tribute to my time and things learned from Ross and because it sounds better than "Main Model".
Elegy is built to be a modern, dependable tool for the concert hall. It uses a solid, cedar soundboard voiced for a traditional timbre using my own method of lattice bracing. The goal is for a fundamental resonance that remains salient and rich in the toughest performance settings, but not overly warm and "muddy". Clarity, balance and voice separation are key attributes of Elegy and I work very hard to ensure that it is both very responsive and resilient over time.
The design is my iterative standard for what I believe is the proper, concert classical guitar. It combines my own unique views of construction with those past and present - many of whom I consider very good friends.