"It’s the neatest woodwork on the planet." Michael Hornick’s eyes twinkle like those of a guitar-making Santa Claus as he shows off the shop where he builds nine or ten guitars a year under the Shanti name. "There’s nothing that compares to the finished product of an instrument. It’s alive, and it’s so much more than just a piece of woodwork."

Hornick considers himself a true custom builder. "It’s not just offering custom options," he says. "For me the ultimate thing in building is to have players come to my shop, to sit down and listen to them play, and then absolutely zero in on their taste in every aspect of the instrument, whether it’s some far-out new kind of inlay or just the purfling that goes around the top. So it’s two people’s creativity going into the instrument, not one." Hornick pulls out a few examples of his exquisitely detailed work. "Every rosette is different. You wouldn’t believe the stuff we come up with sometimes. Until it’s right, I can’t stop."

Hornick’s obsession with detail is evident. "I do an awful lot of stuff inside the instrument: interlocking braces, laminated bridge plates. . . . It takes time to do that little bitty stuff, but that’s the thing that drives me: can I make it better? I’d like to think that my instruments will end up having a real life span. Not 50 or 100 years, but hopefully hundreds."

This high level of craftsmanship is one reason you will find Shanti guitars in the hands of players like Pat Flynn, Peter McLaughlin, Oliver Waitze, and Lorin Rowan. Another reason is the sound. "I’m such a tone freak," Hornick explains. "It’s easy to get a big bottom on a guitar. It’s a whole different ball game to get the midrange just as sweet and thick. On the really good-sounding guitars, when you hit a treble note it pulls out all the bass overtones that are sympathetic to it. What makes that aliveness and effervescence in the tone is when it’s pulling out its opposites. You get it from both sides; it doesn’t just come from one place."

SF with maple back & sides & custom inlay

Hornick says that "a master luthier can make a really good-sounding guitar out of most any piece of wood, [but] they’ll make a great-sounding guitar out of a great piece of wood." Which is why he gets so excited about tonewoods. "I just go nuts over the woods. This [he gestures to his wood storage closet] is my playroom, my favorite room." He points to some stacks of wood. "That’s silver spruce from the Black Forest. Right now I’ve got 35 German tops that are to die for. I can remember way back in the ’60s when you got your little baggie and it was like, ‘I got my stash.’ That’s the way I feel in here all the time. I’ll call [a luthier friend] and say, ‘I got a real good score for you’ and start laughing. We actually relate it that way sometimes." He pulls out another piece. "This is some gorgeous yellow spruce. Put your nose on the end and smell it."

When Michael began building his first steel-stringed acoustic guitar in the summer of 1984, he realized immediately that he had found his passion in the world of wood-working. Woodworking has always been a part of his life, but guitar building, in particular, brought together those key elements that could transform an interest into a life's work. Michael was always fascinated by guitars and guitar music, as well as the beauty of forms created from wood.
His approach to guitar building reflects his desire to achieve the perfect balance of visual, tactile, and musical aesthetics. Because excellent tone must be a top priority, Michael devotes considerable time and energy to voicing each instrument individually. He believes that proper voicing cannot be achieved by simply building a guitar body to certain rigidly adhered-to specifications.

Instead, Michael starts out with two very different kinds of "blueprints" ; his own technically complete design,and the client's dream. At each critical step in the building process body parts are carefully observed, flexed, listened to, and adjusted until it is clear they will perform optimally as a finished unit.
The word Shanti"(shawn tee) comes from the ancient, language Sanskrit. It's meaning is peace. 
A variety of tasteful binding and rosette  combinations are available.

     Custom Inlays

Luthier Michael Hornick believes that the best instruments in the world are orchestrated, not built, and that each of the instruments he creates deserves his undivided attention. There is no energy put into supervising a staff of builders because quantity is not the goal. There will never be more than a few of these flawlessly executed instruments. Michael listens to each piece of wood as it is sculpted and stressed to deliver the performance he requires. The result is an instrument that is uniquely responsive and articulate over a wide dynamic range. A rich bass, with crystal clear overtones, supports a clean smooth middle range that transitions perfectly to a sweet high end that wants to hang around all day. This is the basic performance profile of each Shanti Guitar. In a real sense music comes built in.

Beyond tone and playability, a high quality acoustic guitar should be beautiful. Over the years Michael has been drawn to the use of decorative inlay as a visual enhancement to his guitar designs. He welcomes orders for

custom inlay as an added opportunity for self-expression, and is particularly responsive to his clients' input when creating designs.

Michael works with mother-of-pearl, abalone, recycled ivory, silver, and wood to decorate pegheads, fingerboards, heel caps, and end seams, or to

highlight tops, rosettes, and bridges. His images are often pieced together mosaic-style, etched, or a combination of both techniques. A mirror-polished, nitrocellulose lacquer is used on all guitars.

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One way Hornick shares his knowledge of lutherie is through a mandolin-building course he teaches each year at the RockyGrass Festival in Lyons, Colorado, and again in his own workshop. "In four or five days, you get the experience of building an instrument," he says. "The students do their own fretwork, they carve their own necks, they put everything together. They don’t bend [the sides]. I cut the ledges for the purfles and the bindings, but they glue them in and scrape them down. One of the things I want to make sure people get in the class is the freedom to be artistic. It’s real fun because all the enthusiasm and everything that’s going on, as well as the process, is shared. They walk away in a whole different place."

RockyGrass is but one of the many festivals Hornick attends. Each year the winner of the Troubadour singer-songwriter competition at Telluride walks away with a Shanti. "Telluride has been really good because everybody knows me; I’ve been a part of the festival forever," he says. "The big deal for me is staying in touch with the people and the players. Most of my orders come that way rather than through the mail."

He recently completed guitar number 77, but Hornick still remembers the thrill of his first instrument. "Guitar making was the avenue for my artistic [impulse] to come out. With the guitar, I just never got tired of doing it. [The first one] took a year and then it was alive. And when I strung it up, I knew that this was it, this is what I was trying to find. Ultimately the whole thing was finding the passion and having the opportunity to go for it. I consider myself unbelievably fortunate."

Shanti Guitars

Michael Hornick, Luthier

P.O. Box 310

Avery, California 95224

USA

Phone: 209-795-5299

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