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One of the great joys of guitar making is breathing new life into material that lived for hundreds of years in the heartwood of a tree. I love the feeling of connection that comes from natural materials, so I tend to use ingredients found in nature. Almost everything in my guitars derives from a plant or animal.
Combining these elements into a sensitive and powerful instrument is a wonderfully complex process that combines linear and nonlinear thinking. As I build, I use metrics to evaluate structural and acoustic properties, but instinct, experience, and aesthetic judgment play a crucial role as well. The most important requirement is that the guitar stirs the soul, something no amount of deflection testing or modal analysis can guarantee.