Ok, officially it was a few days ago...
About ten years ago, one of my OEM buyers and I agreed to a trade. A bunch of my parts for one of his guitars. This was a "Free Time" deal... as we had free time away from other orders, we'd do a bit of work one each others' stuff. We knew it would take a while.
It's a good thing I'm patient!
The guitar was finished almost exactly a year ago, but I found myself very busy and short on time to go get it from it's place in Victoria, BC, Canada. It was built by
Heatley Guitars.
This weekend, a very short window of opportunity arose, and we took it.
Now, some here may know about CITES and all that, so let me tell you, I was scared as hell crossing back through the Canada/US border with it, afraid customs would take it, and I'd never see it again. If you don't know what CITES is, you'd better look it up before travelling with your axe. Basically, you need a passport for your guitar, and you'd better pray that they don't look at it funny. Lots of high profile seizures.
Well, here it is. The axe I waited ten years for. It's remarkable.
The first picture, taken by the builder after it was finished. The covered pickups were swapped for something I made special for myself.
