Three Sister Guitars

The story of the Three Sister Guitars.

In 2009, a gentleman from Canada ordered a Perla guitar, with very specific demands: Jimmy page pentagram inlays, Jimmy Page symbols engraved, a dragon on the rear. This became La Perla #05, the first dragon I’d done. I was able to talk him out of the pentagram fingerboard inlays, and did them in the knobs instead. He was blown away by the guitar, said it was the most inspiring guitar he’d ever played. He was immediately thinking of ordering a second one, probably a La Llama.

In the meantime, I had sold my personal La Llama guitar #A025 to a collector friend, and was planning on making a second one, for myself, to replace that one. The 25 was the very first La Llama. I had found this incredible black Korina and some incredible Maple tops. So I suggested to my Canadian customer the idea of making his and my La Llama parallel to each other, as ‘Sister’ guitars. But then I’d also come up with the idea of the El Dorado, and he went for that one instead.

The Korina I had was plenty for a good number of guitars, so I decided to not shelve the ‘sister’ project, but to offer it as option on the web site. The idea was that customers could choose a lady to be engraved on the back. In my old Dutch town, a social hub was the Three Sister Cafe, so I went with 3 sister guitars, and then decided to also make 3 sister S-ses.

• A-sister-1 became my own La Llama with engraving of my wife on the rear;
• A-sister-2 got sold to one of my best friends w engraving of his wife; and
• A-sister-3 was reserved by one of my dealers who really didn’t want a lady engraved, but a Japanese fighting mask.

Then my Canadian customer came back, saying he wanted the Sister guitar as well as his El Dorado. The dealer had changed his order to a Korina La Llama, but not a sister, and the original customer got the Sister-3 instead. His wish was for her to be the Lady Guadalupe.My Canadian customer assured me that he would never ever part with his Teyes, but things changed when he was offered an original stunning 1959 Gibson Flame Les Paul. With sadness he wrote me that ‘most of the herd just had to go’. That is how in the end the Sister-3 STILL wound up in that dealer’s hands, but this time for sale instead of as his own guitar.

And, coincidentally, the Sister-3 became the 100-th guitar to ever leave my workshop.

The 3-sister-S-ses are also out there in the hands of very satisfied customers.

Greetings,

Teye

Wood and Tone:

Korina is a very musical wood, tonally close to Mahogany, but with a little more ‘snap’ to it. Limba is a version that carries traces of wood infected by beetles. The reaction of the wood to the beetle results in some excuisite figuring of the wood. Not often is there black Korina that is suitable for the Electric Gypsy (weight-wise). To quote one of our wood suppliers: “Black Korina is all over the place”…

The original 98 Flying V’s that Gibson made in 1958 were all white Korina, a better behaved but less figured wood. In keeping with the wild spirit of the Electric Gypsy guitar, I will use the temperamentfully figured black Limbo, on both A-Series and S-Series guitars.