Ben Walker’s Fan Fret Baritone guitar is for sale, the one that he used when he won the best duo award with Josienne Clark at the BBC2 Folk Awards in 2015

We were in the audience at the Wales Millenium Centre in Cardiff for this award, sitting alongside Martin Simpson and many other Folk luminaries.

At the very first notes from Ben's guitar, there was a huge “ooh” from everywhere and you can hear the crowd’s reaction at the end of the video - it really was a very special occasion, and this performance was a milestone.

Of course, BBC sound engineers are the very best, but I still think the guitar's tone here is as good as I've ever heard.

It’s very odd for me to be selling this guitar, I'd like Ben to keep it and be playing it for ever, but that is the whole point. He doesn't play it anymore. His music has “moved on”. Sad in some ways, good in others. I'm glad to be able to help.

And he wants to replace it with another Fylde. So that's ok then.

Ben has two other lovely Fylde guitars which cover most of his repertoire, he came to the workshop to have them serviced, and to discuss the options for the new one.

We happened to have a number of new and used guitars which he could try out, that doesn't happen very often.

This was an opportunity to show what can be involved in the discussions of a new guitar, so Sam English came along to record the whole thing on video, we included a quick workshop tour then went to the pub to play Pool and record some more music. Of course, we ended the day with beer and curry. Very splendid.

This is just a "taster" of the main event.  The complete  video - all 51 minutes of it, will be in the next newsletter, hopefully in a couple of weeks.

We have now decided all the main points of Ben's next instrument and I’ll be showing you the final result as soon as I can.

The back and sides are glorious "Pure" Cocobolo. The best you will ever see. It's common nowadays to use wild grained, exotic pieces of these rare hardwoods, because most of the "finer" grades have gone. I still have quite lot of that very best material, but Cocobolo is a horrible wood to work with and I'm very mindful of the implications for our health. We might not use it again, and if we do, it will be expensive.

The soundboard is a super piece of Englemann Spruce, extremely fine and even grained, with lots of cross grain silking, and a very gentle "Waving " along the length which you might just be able to see in the photographs, rather lovely.

When I was making the guitar, I found some excellent pieces of mahogany for the neck, but they were not very thick, and I had to decide what to do. Using the principle of "if you've got it, flaunt it", I decided to make a feature of it, and gain the extra width needed with contrasting pieces of Rosewood. I didn't ask Ben, and he has never said anything. Would I do that again? I really don't know. Comments welcome. Second thoughts, no, please don't.

The other neck laminations are Ash and Rosewood.

The woods used and the size of the guitar make this quite a heavy instrument, 2.5 kg, while the standard Falstaff is usually about 2.1kg.  The guitar has a huge sustain and massive "headroom" as a result. It really is rather special .

The guitar has a simple "Bevel" which helps with playing comfort on such a deep body. There are three or four very small dents in the lacquer near the bevel, and one rather annoying scratch running south from the sound hole, you should just be able to see it in the photographs. Ben told me that happened when another bands microphone fell on the guitar at a house concert, and he also said that nobody actually died as a result. It's only a light scratch, but it's very annoying. 
There are the usual scuff marks on the back from a busy life, and I think we can remove or improve most of the smaller imperfections.

The neck and action are perfect, there is a little fret wear which I'm happy to discuss, but with a guitar such as this I don’t want to remove any history until I've talked about it with any potential owner, so if you are interested. please do ask.

The neck is 45mm wide at the nut, with no fingerboard position markers, and the internal pickup is the Baggs Anthem.

Complete with Hiscox case, the guitar is for sale at £5,800 ono

Enjoy! If you have any questions, do please email me