IT always starts with tonewood - a fine piece of ebony or South American rosewood, or perhaps a WA jarrah or bunya pine from New South Wales.
And it doesn't take much of it - just a metre or so - in the hands of luthier Scott Wise to craft it into a fine instrument.
Using skills honed over more than four decades, Mr Wise handcrafts bespoke ukuleles, guitars, mandolins and violins, which become the prized possessions of their new owners.
And all using wood he has spent years chasing down and collecting from around Australia and the world.
"I delivered a classical guitar the other day to a lady, who is never going to be a concert guitarist, but she wanted something that suited her size and the way she played,'' Mr Wise said.
"I was able to do that and it will be of great value to her.
"If you can do that, one thing at a time for different people, it is a great result."
As a teenager, Mr Wise liked making things.
Back then, growing up in suburban Perth, it was mostly surfboards which captured his attention.
He studied geology at university, but as work prospects in the field were slim at the time, he made a career pivot to music.
Mr Wise started playing in bands and working in music retail - and guitar repairs became a natural extension of that work.
"That was where I started in the craft,'' he said.
"I was pretty-well self-taught in guitar repairs, as there were only about two books on how to do it in those days - and no google.
"I was working with musicians, working in music retail and doing repairs for the place I worked."
While touring in the Eastern States in the early 1970s, he met and was inspired by master luthier Steve Gilchrist.
A formidable guitar and mandolin maker, Mr Gilchrist had likewise got into the craft having made surfboards as a teen and under the influence of other, earlier instrument makers.
Mr Gilchrist's instruments now sell for about $20,000 each.
Mr Wise worked at Gilchrist Mandolins & Guitars for a year, moving with his young family to its Victorian workshop, before returning to set up his own guitar repair shop in Swanbourne.
That was in 1978.
"From that moment, I was building guitars and mandolins for people,'' Mr Wise said.
Seven hundred guitars and a couple of workshop moves later, Mr Wise has himself become something of a name within his rarified field.
His output includes a few hundred instruments scattered around the world and into the hands of some world-famous musicians.
Eric Bibb has one of his baritone guitars, Loudon Wainwright III has a soprano guitar and Del Ray bought a jarrah concert ukulele for his mother.
"I don't seek out high profile artists to play my instruments, even though a few do,'' he said.
"It just makes me really happy that I have done something good in someone's life."
Mr Wise will soon share his expertise in a presentation at Strings Attached - the Western Australian Guitar Festival, which runs in Margaret River from October 7-9.
The festival, born in 2019 from a conversation between three locals, including Mr Wise, was set up as a means of improving the town's tourism potential and has become a significant annual drawcard for guitar makers, players and enthusiasts in WA and around Australia.
"And it presents me with a deadline every October to get ready for,'' Mr Wise laughed.
The festival will showcase a broad range of guitars - by makers big and small.
But uncommon among them are the eclectic luthiers, such as Mr Wise, who make all kinds of instruments solo and by hand.
"That's largely to do with the technology that people employ to make instruments,'' explained Mr Wise, who though largely self-taught, studied violin making in the United States.
"They tend not to do a lot of hand tool work as I came up doing and have been taught to do.
"I have always worked with mainly hand tools.
"Nowadays everything is a lot more mechanised.''
It takes him about 30-40 hours to make a standard-sized guitar - with the majority of it spent gluing the timbers together then waiting for the materials to stabilise.
"If I am in a hurry I can make a guitar in not much over a month,'' he said.
Mr Wise tends to work on only a couple at a time - from a range that includes the piccolo, soprano, concert, tenor, baritone and acacia bass.
"At the moment, I am finishing some ukuleles and making an arched top jazz guitar and an arch top mandolin," he said.
The ukulele design he has developed is traditional - based on historic Hawaiian instruments and their precursors from Portugal and Spain - but customisable.
He said he closely integrated the top thickness and arching, interior bracing, wood choice, neck angle, fingerboard thickness and bridge height to produce the optimum sound.
He can personalise the tuning pegs, neck width, saddle and nut materials, stringing, fingerboard and bridge material, pickups and inlays for the customer.
"I believe that the traditional, lightly-built, handmade ukuleles of the early 20th century have important characteristics which are not found in modern instruments,'' he said.
"I am working to regain some of the old magic.''
Mr Wise sells ukuleles from about $1600-$2000 and guitars start from about $4500-$5000 - which reflects the care and craftsmanship involved.
He said very specialised, classical guitar makers can charge up to $20,000 for their instruments, while factories which mass-produce 200-300 guitars a month can sell them for a few hundred dollars.
"The most technologically advanced factory in Australia, that makes guitars, takes about 7.5 hours to make each guitar - so it is the hand tools versus the other tools,'' he said.
"The best instruments are still made in very small workshops by one or a handful of people - that is just the way it goes."
Mr Wise sells his guitars via word of mouth and through a handful of trusted music retailers.
He doesn't need to advertise.
His challenge - and at times it can be significant for quality instrument makers - is maintaining a supply of high quality wood.
Good quality guitars - which sound and look good - need high quality timber.
Historically, that mainly meant the use of rosewood, mahogany and ebony, sourced from tropical rainforests in South America, Africa and South East Asia, which have become increasingly endangered.
Since the early 2000s, import bans have tightly controlled the trade of some of these timbers.
In 2017, guitar and other musical instrument manufacturers were caught up in an international crackdown on the illegal logging of rosewood - which cost instrument companies millions of dollars.
A prized timber, rosewood was renowned for its rich, multi-colour grain and resonant sound - but became endangered when huge quantities began to be smuggled to Chinese factories to manufacture luxury furniture.
Restrictions on ebony - a very hard wood used for fret boards - have been in place since 2008.
Though some of the tensions for instrument makers were resolved, a system of worldwide import permits still applies.
Mr Wise said from the "get-go'' of his instrument making, he worked hard to secure a supply of very high quality wood.
"It took me around the world and I am still using it,'' he said.
Mr Wise said while some South American rosewoods and various ebonies remain on a restricted list - it was still possible to use some of the traditional timbers.
"The long-established traditional woods that are used in violin-making still make the best violins in some ways,'' he said.
But supply constraints also mean innovation - and many instrument makers have looked to alternative woods, including Australian natives, which produce a lovely sound.
He said Australian guitar maker Brad Clark, at Cole-Clark guitars, in NSW, had started using bunya pine sourced from northern NSW and Queensland.
"There are many Australian woods that have been used, and worked very well, in stringed instruments,'' Mr Wise said.
"They are different in some ways and some of them are optimal - they are the best thing to possibly use.
"Among that is some of the Western Australian wood.
"I used a few of those."
He has found the native hardwood Australian blackwood, wandoo, a medium-sized woodland timber, and brown mallet, a tree endemic to WA's south west, made great guitars and ukuleles.
"Wandoo and brown mallet are fantastic for the very hard part of guitars, like fingerboards,'' he said.
"They are every bit as good as the ebony that has been used for centuries."
But, he said, it was sometimes easier to import ebony from overseas than to get Australian timbers - because of a lack of local saw millers prepared to supply it.
"It is hard to get saw millers to be even interested in the way I use wood, or even the way I want it milled,'' Mr Wise said,
"They are producing stuff for the cabinetry and building industries.
"But through the use of old, traditional techniques, which the Italian violin makers used, I can get a log and pretty much split it out to make a lot of really good instrument wood.
"It is just knowing the techniques."
Sourcing timber may become even more restricted in the near future, as the WA Government moves to lock up the South West forests from logging.
Mr Wise is concerned, but can foresee that private land will remain a source of wood for craftsmen, such as himself.
"The instrument industry doesn't use the vast quantities of timber that furniture making does and it is such a high quality wood for this purpose,'' he said.
"It would be such a shame not to be able to use it."
With all the effort and attention that goes into making the instruments, Mr Wise said he does not find it hard to part with them - though he likes to check in with them and their owners from time-to-time.
He said, like a fine red wine, wood instruments get better with age - as the timbers and glues mature.
And like a past acquaintance or an old school mate, it's nice to catch up and see how they are going down the track.
"The thing with me is it's not difficult to hand them over - that's fine - but I really do like to visit them,'' he said.
"I like to see how they have gone after a couple of years.
"Probably after 10 years, they reach the way they are going to be.
"I really enjoy seeing them once they have been around for a while.
"I think I get better at doing it as I go along, but to see something I made in the 1990s, is just fantastic.
"My focus is on what I am building at the moment and then if I get to see them a couple of years down the track."
