One of the Most Beautiful Guitars Ever Made…

This beautifully made single cutaway hollow-body with a single curved 'slash' soundhole weighs just 5.90 lbs. The carved top is made from aged Sitka Spruce and the carved back and sides are Australian Lacewood. The neck which is made of Honduran mahogany has a scale-length of 24 5/8 inches and a wonderfully huge and meaty profile rather akin to that of a '59 Les Paul… The nut width is a fat 1 3/4 inches and the ebony fretboard has 22 small jumbo frets and an inlaid abalone 'Dragonfly' at the twelfth fret (the tail extending across to the thirteenth fret). The side dot markers on the top edge of the fretboard are Paua shell surrounded by sterling silver. The headstock has a veneer of Spalted Koa and the "Myka" logo is inlaid with mother of pearl. Individual three-per-side Waverly open backed tuning keys with ebony buttons. The neck pickup is a Bartolini ZBS-70 and the bridge pickup is a Bartolini ZBS-75. The pickup outputs are 19.50k and 21.20k respectively. Four controls including a master volume and a master tone with series/parallel blend potentiometers for each pickup together with a three-way selector switch. The control knobs are cylindrical ebony. The bridge is Ebony with a bone saddle on an adjustable ebony base and the tailpiece is made of veneered Spalted Koa. An absolutely mint (9.50) example housed in the original TKL black hardshell case with maroon plush lining (9.50).

The series/parallel blend potentiometers work like a regular switch when in the full clockwise and counter-clockwise positions. In the midway point only one coil is active giving a single coil tone. Clockwise configures the coils in series mode for that classic humbucker tone. Start from there and experiment… The master volume is nearest to the bridge, blow it is the neck blend control, to the right is the bridge blend control and above that is the master tone.

Here is David Myka's online description of this guitar (which was made August 2004 and sold in early 2005)
"Dragonfly Deluxe #017: With the full range of tone that this guitar has to offer, it is suited for a variety of musical styles. The traditional archtop voice is very present, and as usable as the voice from a larger jazz box. The clean tones are lush and beautiful and compliment the sustained chord work found in many pop and rock styles. The bridge pickup adds a certain crystalline edge to the sound perfect for quick chord chops and fast lead runs.

Played through a clean amplifier, the guitar functions as a versatile rhythm instrument or stands on its own as a lead guitar. Play through a high gain overdrive unit and you have the makings of a fusion machine. Once the sweet spot is found, the volume control can act as a feedback valve. A sustained chord or note can easily be coaxed into a very musical feedback blossom. This instrument delivers a clear voice whether clean or overdriven--accompanied or solo.

The Dragonfly Deluxe design evolved from my standard electric guitar design that was extended to have more of an acoustic tone. There is a significant neck block for the set neck to glue into which also surrounds the neck pickup. The rest of the body is hollow. The Sitka top is carved to a rather high arch for its smaller body size. It is graduated slightly thicker than a standard acoustic archtop to add strength and minimize feedback.

The necks are constructed using a two-way adjustable truss with 1/4" graphite tubes flanking the truss rod on either side. I find that the graphite adds stability and stiffness to the neck while minimizing dead spots on the fingerboard. The graphite accomplishes this due to its high velocity of sound as compared to wood, allowing for string vibrations to travel quickly and evenly through the neck. I apply the same acoustic principles to all of my instruments and employ a tap tuning approach to determine the final thickness of the top and back. I also do this to find the perfect match for the fingerboard and neck woods. The carved neck is comparable to a standard round profile archtop neck, making for a comfortable guitar neck that fills your hand and facilitates playing more complex chord shapes.

A bone saddle was inlaid into the bridge to give the guitar the brilliance of an electric guitar coupled with the smoothness of the archtop voice. The bridge design is pivotal to the guitar's function and provides an amazing array of tones not possible with a wooden bridge. With this bridge feature the archtop concept can be realized within the framework of a traditional electric guitar. To compensate for the brighter, punchier bridge tone, the tone control has a lower value capacitor, providing a greater treble cut. With the tone rolled back about 1/3 of the way you are in archtop territory. Now you can push the tone further into the darker, smoky regions.

The electronics for the Dragonfly Deluxe consist of a master volume, a master tone, a series parallel blend pot for each pickup, and a pickup selector switch. I chose the Bartolini ZBS series pickups for their incredible clarity and high fidelity (ZBS-70 in the neck and ZBS-75 in the bridge). These pickups are potted in epoxy which reduces the distortion introduced by minute coil movements and produce a very clean and accurate representation of the guitar's acoustic voice with all of the subtleties and nuances present.

The finish is nitrocellulose lacquer and it is applied very thin and without grain filler for the least effect on the tone of the guitar." (http://www.mykaguitars.com/instruments/017/default.htm)