Sakashta Archtop

Product Description

*S O L D*

Taku Sakashta came to the US in 1991 and started his own business. In 1996, he moved to Sonoma, California, designing and building all types of guitars. Taku’s goal was, “to achieve perfection in sound, construction, decoration and finish”. His primary focus was the archtop guitar, although he could build anything and did so for many of the world’s best guitarists. At the time of his death Taku’s website mentioned that he was in the process of designing a guitar for both Tuck Andress and Pat Martino. Each musician demands different instruments because each has different talents, motivations and preferences from varying sonic, aesthetic and tactile points of view. Taku Sakashta realized the importance of past traditions in guitar building, and has used this as a foundation to build his futuristic instruments for performers looking for personalization without compromise. Taku’s designs took the traditional archtop in a new direction. A combination of a “hollowed out” solid body with a carved arched top, going beyond traditional archtops, beyond chambered bodies, while still maintaining the beauty of most of the functionality of an F hole archtop. Although nothing has the tone, warmth, and chordal note separation as the traditional archtop, because of Taku’s vision, more luthiers will pursue similar types of endeavors beyond traditional boundaries.SAKASHTA

Specifications

About Palen

Nelson Palen started building his acoustic archtop Palen Guitar in November, 1998 and finished it the last week in June, 1999. He read the book and viewed the 6-hour video by Bob Benedetto, who has been building guitars and violins for 30 years and is considered the premier archtop builder in the country. The Palen archtop is unique in that the soundboard and back are carved from wood approx. 1″ thick to a domed shape similar to that found on a violin.

Before Nelson made Palen archtops, he had been making decorative wooden bowls as shown here for approx. 12 years. His woodworking skills and attention to detail began here and from his ancestry. His dad, Benedict Palen, has been doing woodwork since the 1930’s starting out with a pedal-powered lathe. His dad’s enterprise, Artistic Woodcrafts started with a Shopsmith and then homebuilt a heavy-duty lathe capable of swinging up to 32″ diameter blanks.. The blanks for the bowls are made up of segmented rings stacked and glued. Various wood species, domestic and foreign are used. Examples are walnut, white gum, padauk, wenge, mahogany etc. Nelson Palen added a CNC desktop mill in 1998 that can be mounted on the lathe for engraving. The spindle is slowly rotated by computer command with approx. 1000:1 reduction. The basic turning operation is done with conventional hand tools.

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