Over the past decades, I visited Las Vegas many times, yet somehow never made it to Death Valley. In April 2024, during a business trip, I decided to stay one extra day. I rented a cool convertible and finally drove into the desert.

The experience was far beyond anything I had imagined. The endless scale of the valley, the overwhelming heat, the surreal atmosphere of Badwater Basin, the bizarre rock formations, and the almost science-fiction-like silence of the landscape completely drew me in.

I immediately knew that I wanted to preserve this feeling and materialize it in one of my guitars. During the trip, I used empty water bottles to collect sand from different locations throughout Death Valley, each carrying its own unique color tone. I also found a completely dried branch on the desert floor and embedded it into the fingerboard. The entire front of the guitar was coated with authentic Death Valley sand.

The back of the guitar remained sky blue — reflecting the absolutely cloudless desert sky above me that day.

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