Rather than attempt to praise Michihiro Matsuda ourselves, we’d like to let his teacher and master luthier Ervin Somogyi speak for his work: “Michi is really a phenomenon. There will never be anyone like him. He has a beautiful sense of the line in his designs, and his work is remarkably original.” In our eyes, Matsuda is doing more to evolve the marriage of sonic precision and visual elegance in guitar building than many, if not all, of his peers. His dedication to graceful figures and sculpted tonality is unparalleled, yielding instruments which exist simultaneously as both works of art and tools for creating art. The 2011 M1 before you is just one example of this man’s genius problem-solving skills at work: rather than succumb to the flaw of the Manzer Wedge–which is that the fretboard is traditionally rotated towards the player’s face and forced the left hand to cant at an unnatural angle–Michi introduced a subtle twist to the Mahogany, cantilevering it over the top so it floats like an Archtop guitar. In so doing, Michi created a guitar which was as comfortable and responsive as a traditional Manzer Wedge and as easy to fret as a standard body, thereby enhancing the advantages of both systems with the drawbacks of neither. In addition, the M1 has a subtle multiscale system and his iconic swooped Florentine Cutaway. The detailed segmented rosette of Wenge and Spalted Wood and Matsuda’s carved two-piece Rosewood-and-Wenge bridge stand out as examples of woodworking at its finest, most precise execution. Sonically, the M1 has crystalline balance. Each string rings perfectly clear in respect to its brothers, and the Manzer Wedge helps create a voice with a tight, controlled sound. This guitar is amazingly responsive, but has a thoughtful sonority that makes it the perfect instrument for fingerstylists of every walk. The Madagascar Rosewood (whose provenance Michi has documented) and German Spruce (which was cut in the 1930’s and air dried in the care of a German luthier since then) are paired and tuned to create an instrument with shocking balance and alluring grain patterns across the back and sides. Finally, this guitar comes well-protected with its original Karura hardshell flightcase, so the M1 is practically immune to harm. But all of this pales in comparison to experiencing this guitar firsthand. In fact, we feel that there’s no way to truly grasp how moving this instrument is to the soul, which is why we strongly recommend coming to see us to play this one-of-a-kind work of art.