Guitar Details:

Guitar Size - TBD

25.4 Scale, 1 3/4" nut, 14" radius

Ebony, Fretboard, Headstock, Pickguard and Bridge

Tortoise shell binding 

​Abalone trim all edges (45 style)

Price - $50,000.00

Harvey Leach  Custom Inlays and Guitars 

Millennium Redwood

50th Anniversary Celebration

Tortoise shell Tree Mahogany

For this guitar I want to tell the story of where the journey has brought me to. Using the best woods I have been able to collect along with the unique inlay style I have developed over the years.


One of the greatest joys of the first 50 years of my musical instrument journey has be the quest for the perfect guitar wood! I'm not ashamed to say that I love wood, particularly wood that nature has chosen to be unique among it's peers. My first love was Brazilian Rosewood... pretty much like everyone who has ever built guitars... great looking, great sounding, rare and maybe best of all... great smelling! Trust me, a lot of the "rosewood" out there smells NOTHING like roses! Then one day another builder showed me a set of some Mahogany from "the Tree" I was hooked! From that point on I set out to collect as much of The Tree as I could afford. I'd guess over the years I've been able to scrape together probably close to 50 or 60 sets. The creme de la creme of those sets are known as Tortoise shell or Turtle-back, a unique combination of quilted figure wrapped in a very tight single curl of grain. The effect is 3 dimensional. This guitar will feature an incredibility example that I have been hoarding for this special occasion.

For the soundboard I will be using another of my wood finds, I call it Millennium Redwood. It's actually named after the first guitar I built from it, a guitar I started on January 1 2000. Of course someone pointed out that the new millennium didn't start until 2001 so I started a second guitar on January 1 2001... thereby covering both the end of the last one and the start of the new one... Long story short this wood looks as great as it sounds, lush is the term I think best describes it.


For the inlays on this one I have decided to lean in the direction of what I have become know for as an inlay artist, realism. One of the great things about doing realistic inlays is the pallet is so much bigger. With shell there are only a dozen or so choices and most of them look so similar to some of the others the sort of blend together. The gold mine of synthetics like Corian, acrylic, phenolic, fiberglass and reconstituted stone combined with natural wood and metal allow for inlays that are striking and represent the natural colors of nature.

Tree Millennium Guitar 

 (one of a Kind)