Supreme - the first Canadian-made Padalka guitar

You may wonder why it looks so different from my other designs. The simple answer is: For a change. But the full one is a little more involved.

As a designer confined to a certain style I sometimes get the itch to create something different, something outside my normal design language. First of all, it’s just refreshing, but it also invites new ideas that can trickle into the main line. I consider them exploration pieces.
The first occasion was in 2017 when I started to burn out and made the two Sun guitars to relieve some of the creative tension.

The second one was the Polaris prototype when I had a rough time in my personal life that ended in a divorce from Daria, to whom I had delegated most of the design work until then. I felt suffocated both personally and creatively and it was like a gulp of fresh air. This prototype became an outlet for the pent-up feelings and design creativity. You can read its build story HERE.

A year later, when Russia disappointed me in every possible sense I decided to leave and move to Canada. I got hired at Dingwall and started the immigration process (it took a year). I sold all the equipment and left the rights for the old Padalka models with Daria as she designed most of them. There was a lot of uncertainty, I wasn’t sure I would be able to restart Padalka Guitars in a new place. But Dingwall gave me a wonderful opportunity to use their shop on weekends and I started designing. This is how the Supreme began to take shape, and you can probably see why I chose something closer to the Polaris than my usual Padalka style. New country, new family, new shop; it felt wrong to go back to old designs.

I didn’t know if this design was going to stay or remain a prototype; I just wanted to start somewhere I felt free to explore. Eventually I developed a whole product line using some of that new design language, but those are much more connected to the Padalka image.

Now I’m concentrating on headless models, so the Supreme, and especially Sn.226 “Suprematism” remains a one-off. This one is special in yet another way: it is a show piece I made for Sound Messe Osaka 2024. I wanted my first Canadian guitar to be showcased properly and the Boutique Guitar Showcase Osaka tour was coming up. I had a spot reserved from before the pandemic (the show was canceled and the tour pushed back to 2024).

Why Suprematism? I have a certain fondness for that art style because it’s one of the purest forms of graphic composition, and composition is everything in design. When students practice composition in art school they use simple geometric shapes and colors to master visual balance, proportions and rhythm; and that’s essentially Suprematism.

Sure, this guitar is nowhere near a Malevich painting, and it’s a combination of styles. The brass details, the shape of the pickup covers, the size and positioning of control knobs and clearly defined shapes in general — those are screaming Suprematism. The body outline has the characteristic whiplash curve of Art Nouveau, while the guitar as a whole has a contemporary tech aesthetic.

By the way, this is a part of what I’m teaching in the Design Lab. The next cohort starts shortly after NAMM, so let me know if you’re interested.

I chose a neck-through construction which is emphasized nicely by the tapered body wings. This is another thing I prefer in design — visual honesty.
I also wanted to keep the clean neck-headstock transition (or lack thereof) I used on the Polaris. To make sure this doesn’t weaken the construction I extended carbon fiber rods into the headstock.
By the way, I built Sn.226 and Sn.227 side by side, so you’ll see both of them here.

The side dots are also similar to the ones on the Polaris. Maple and ebony for Sn.227; brass and ebony for Sn.226

Same 2.51x1.3mm Jescar stainless steel frets as I used before. But the new fret press setup took some getting used to.

I didn’t bring any of my tools to Canada apart from some scrapers, so with my first Dingwall paycheck I went straight to Lee Valley to buy my beloved Veritas Low Angle Jack Plane. There’s no better tool to prep the sides of a through-neck because there’s absolutely no margin — I could only shave a few hundredths of a millimeter.

The sides had to be half-machined before the glue-up, and pickguards had to go in first.

You can see that the insides of the horns are already fully machined. I needed them clean and sanded before the glue-up because the sharp and clear neck-body transition I planned would have made it impossible to do afterward.

After machining it was time to check the fit on some details.

And start on some truly challenging parts. The hammered brass details were really hard to pull off. At first I thought I could just do the hammering on a laminated and machined part, but the wood just splintered while the brass warped out of shape. In the end I hammered the whole sheet, flattened it with a rubber mallet as best I could, then laminated it to wood and machined it.

It turned out pretty good in the end. I like the contrast with ebony knobs and the switch plate. I also went to the trouble of mounting the switch from the back because I didn’t want screws to be visible.

But the thing that was really new to me and somewhat intimidating was machining my own bridges. Now that I think about it, I began designing bridges before I even thought of building my first guitar. And I had my own bridges before, but other people made those; I only designed them. The last six went on Sn.227, but this Suprematism guitar needed new ones.

The design was ready: I developed it during the six months I spent in Tbilisi waiting for my work permit application to be processed. Now I had a brand new, just commissioned Haas milling machine at my disposal, a plate of 7075 aluminum and zero metalworking experience. Thankfully, Dingwall machined their bridges in house for a very long time, so I had the right people around. That did make the prospect slightly less intimidating. Emphasis on “slightly”.

But I couldn’t delay it any longer: the shipping deadline was only a couple of months away and I only had one day a week to build these guitars. And so I gave it a whole weekend, 7 am to 7 pm: one day to learn, the next to machine, while my lovely wife, in her sixth month of pregnancy, waited patiently for me at home.

It was intense, but I got the parts in the end. I sanded them and sent them to be anodized together with Dingwall’s bridges.

The base plates were the easy part as I made them out of Richlite.
Eventually I would machine my new headless bridges the same way, but for now I could finish this guitar with that major milestone behind me.

I don’t seem to have detailed pictures of how that control plate is mounted, but it’s a combination of magnets on the outside edge, one screw to keep it from sliding and tabs along the straight edges that slide into grooves in the body. Complicated, but looks clean. Here’s what it looks like from the inside.

A few things were left before the guitar was ready for the show: a tool box, a signature, and a case to keep it safe.

The case is a Pelican Vault V730. I considered different ways to cut the foam but most were impractical. In the end I cut the sheet in half so it would fit in the laser, and cut it in several passes with low power and high speed.

But this is not the end of the story. You can’t expect to sell many guitars at a show smaller than NAMM, and this one was no exception. But there was an option to leave a guitar on consignment in the Miki Gakki store, and I chose that over shipping it back to Canada. Unfortunately, the Japanese economy was down those years and boutique guitar sales weren’t great, so it never sold. After two years I decided to ship it back, as I hated seeing it just hanging on a wall there.

It arrived in perfect condition with absolutely no wear, with just one sign of its time in a humid climate: the laminated wood and brass control plate warped a little because the wood expanded. I should have foreseen that and used a different backing. However, there was no way of changing it now, so I fixed it by adding more screws on the outside.
Now it’s tested by time, minor issues fixed and still in perfect condition, ready for the new owner. Email me if interested.

Scale: 25"
Frets: 24, stainless steel
Neck: mahogany, 5 pieces, neck-through, full-length carbon rods
Fretboard: macassar, compound radius 10–16"
Side markers: oversized rings, brass/macassar
Body: mahogany
Pickguard: macassar
Pickups: Bare Knuckle Stormy Monday, ebony covers
Controls: volume, tone, 5-way switch
Tuners: Graphtech Ratio
Bridge: Padalka Hardtail
Details: ebony knobs and tool box, hammered brass
Weight: 3 kg

Price: $16,350 USD