Custom electric guitars and semi hollow body, archtop, and acoustic guitars and hand made inlay - Pederson Custom Guitars (formerly Abyss Guitar Company)

Inlay is an art in itself. The images here are all done by Kevin L. Pederson, and nothing has been sent to someone else to do. Most guitar manufacturers send out for inlay to be done by others. Here it is ALL hand cut, filed and then inlayed by hand.

You can choose any style for your inlay, from simple dots or blocks to the most ornate VineArt available. Note that some of the inlays you see here are not available on all guitars. For instance, the Last Supper is a Limited Edition inlay and is not available on any other guitar but the LE. Otherwise, most inlays are available on request.

All inlay except dots and blocks require an up charge. Inlay is one of the most time consuming things I do on the guitar. So inlay schemes can take LONGER to select, cut and inlay than it takes to build the guitar. Again, this is an intense, involved process, and one must have developed an eye for what materials will work best.

We use many different materials to depict certain things. To select the pieces you are going to use for the various pictures is an art in itself. For instance, if you were going to make an arm, at the elbow bend you would want to change the grain from up and down to horizontal to follow the directional layout of the arm.

All inlays take time and patience. Basically, I start with a pattern, I look for a suitable material to reproduce the effect I am trying to do. I then take a saw and start to cut the pattern out. I put all the pieces together like a puzzle and put them in the fingerboard.

We do four types of inlays: Religious, Scene, VineArt and Tribal/Icon inlays. In the Religious section encompasses the Limited Edition inlays. Scenes are another specialty—all scene inlay is depicted from an actual scene, and much of it I illustrate by hand before creating the inlay.

The VineArt is very striking as well and incorporates artistic and abstract themes. It tends to be more decorative and elegant. It is very labor intensive to cut and inlay.

The Tribal/Icon category covers position markers that are not dots or blocks. Icons are not connected by a vine or a scene; they simply fit in a fret. They can have a theme. They can also just be individually designed from marker to marker. These are also labor intensive.

The Limited Edition Christian inlays are the first set of Limited Editions. The first of the set, the Crucifixion, uses various inlay materials including Koa, mother of pearl, abalone and maple. The Last Supper was second and has nearly three hundred hand-cut pieces including maple, Koa, Wenge, Brazilian rosewood, walnut, mother of pearl, abalone, Paua, and other woods. See more of the Limited Edition inlays here.