ASAST Pointy Cutaway. The first ever ASAST with a florentine cutaway (it always seems to me that the pointy version should be called venetian since I associate 'pointy' things with Venice and 'curvy' things with Florence but that is not the way it works in the archtop guitar world!). I actually prefer this shape. Woods are engelman spruce for the deeply carved top, tightly flamed Swiss maple for the sides and wider flamed Oregon maple for the carved back. The neck is a laminate of two pieces of birdseye maple with a core of flamed maple with veneer details between them. This guitar is unusual (unique?) in that the body was sunbursted and polished, the neck finished in clear gloss finish and then the two were glued together - usually the neck and body are joined and then the finish is applied and, if it is a sunburst, the neck gets colour as well as the body. The scrachplate, headstock veneer and top loading tail are also clear finished birdseye to complete the contrast. Binding is ivoroid and the machine heads are the lovely stepped button Schaller 'Vintage' in chrome. A really classy packlage to my eye. But it doesn't end there. This one has one of the best acoustic sounds of any archtop I have made - rich and full and ideal for miking up, And the amplified sound using the Kent Armstrong humbucker is wonderful too and it makes a tone control on the guitar unnecessary. This was built as a stock instrument and I really enjoyed having it around and playing it. return to Acoustics Normally I go out of my way to try to remove highlights from pictures of gloss guitars but in this case I have made an exception and taken a pic with angled natural light to show off the curves on the top - see below.