Over Christmas 2004, I met up with Fred Casey, who had just finished doing some work on my Australian guitar, Sidney (a 1998 Lance Litchfield). I’d been playing on the University’s seven-string for a bit by then – this was a recently-built Rawdon-Hall, a good instrument, but totally wrong for my hands (and I was having playing problems as a result). “Fred,” I asked, “have you ever been down the small-scale guitar route at all? I’d like to have a 63cm scale 7-string. Feel like giving it a go?” Fred thought about it, and shrugged. “Yeah, OK”. We talked for a while about woods, tuners, on-board pickups, moose-bone saddles, custom inlays, and such. He and I having decided on a plan, I put down a deposit, and he started building.
In November 2005, Boris was delivered to me (I decided that given its bass-y nature, this guitar was undoubtedly male, and decidedly not a tenor – Boris just seemed like right name, da?). Fred’s wife Kate Ferris was kind enough to document the building process for me via digital camera, so here are the highlights of that visual documentation.
