It may take hours to choose and carefully match the pieces of wood for each guitar. I color coordinate the spruce tops to the rosewood, maple, koa, or walnut. I expend great effort creating every guitar as an aesthetic work of art. James uses no plastic or celluloid on his guitars. He uses a wide variety of woods for the binding and purfling, from exceptionally curly koa and maple binding on the Indian and Brazilian rosewood bodies, purpleheart and vermilion on the maple, to rosewood on the koa and walnut bodies.
Tone is top priority and a wide range is offered to suit every playing style and preference.
There are many things James does to achieve great tone on every guitar. I feel it is an orchestration of all the little things that give each one of my guitars exceptional tone quality and brilliance. Everything from the top and back woods, to the cavity size, to the quartered, split, and shaved bracing, to the bridge design and mass, to the type and thickness of the lacquer finish. All these things and many others are of great import. Incidentally, I don't scallop the top braces to improve tone as most of the other builders do, I feel it compromises structural strength.