Laurie Williams is a solo builder based in New Zealand who has been making guitars since 1993. For the past 25 years he has been focused on building instruments from local, to him, tonewoods with excellent results. This Kiwi model, which is roughly the size of an OM, was crafted in 2005 from some special wood. The top is Kauri (Agathis Australis), a timber that has a tone that sounds like a mix of cedar and spruce, with a clear focused bass, balanced mids and trebles and loads of sustain. The back, slides and neck are also Kauri, but the wood came from trees that had been submerged in peat swamps in northern New Zealand for more than a thousand years.
Like other sinker tonewoods, Ancient Kauri undergoes numerous changes over the centuries and structurally it’s stiffer and denser than younger timber. This particular guitar is made from what is known as Whitebait Kauri, so named because it has a remarkable iridescense in natural light that resembles the glistening scales of schools of small Whitebait fish that swim near to where the Ancient Kauri trees are recovered.
Along with the ancient Kauri wood used for the back, sides, and neck, this has perhaps more Paua (pearl) bordering than we've ever seen on one guitar. The pearl bordering is very narrow and delicate and it adds subtle glimmers of color that catch the light and accentuate the graceful lines of the overall design. We could go on talking about the magic of ancient Kauri wood and the abundance of delicate pearl bordering, but this is also an excellent finger style guitar with exceptional balance and clarity of tone. There's plenty of volume without forcing it, and there's also lots of headroom, too. Includes the original hardshell guitar case.
