I have been a bit tired of my old profile icon, so I decided to update it with a photo of the pick guard that I have on my custom acoustic guitar.

I hired Bill Brunton, of Brunton Classical Guitars, to make a dreadnought for me. Bill also happens to be a member of my thesis committee and one of my Anthropology professors from back in the day. It's good to have a guitar made by one of your mentors.

There is a long backstory to this guitar, but I'll skip it for now.

In short though, the guitar was made as a tribute to my brother who died 20 years ago this past June.

Bill incorporated one of my brother's hockey sticks into the structure of the guitar. Essentially, the hockey stick is the back spine of the guitar.

I chose a dreadnought because Johnny Cash played a dreadnought (although a different model - my guitar is a D28) and Johnny Cash was a favorite of my brother.

Even though the image on the pick guard is of Iron Maiden's Eddie from Aces High, the artwork on the pick guard is actually original art. The artist being the same guy who did the artwork for Stephen King's book, "Blockade Billy". Which I thought was appropriate because my brother was both an Iron Maiden fan and a Stephen King fan.

Yeah, the guitar wasn't cheap.

If you're thinking, it might have been more appropriate to have had an electric guitar made because of the Eddie motif, I somewhat agree. However, I tried contacting a bunch of electric guitar makers, and never got an email back from any of them.

And to be honest, I really wanted a guitar made by Bill anyway. And as usual, he did a fantastic job.