A luthier has showcased what is set to be 2026’s most heartwarming and simultaneously heartbreaking guitar of 2026, with the Matriach – a one-of-a-kind electric guitar that pays tribute to his late wife in the most beautiful way.
Micah Teruya, who runs Teruya Guitars out of Syracuse, IN, typically documents his guitar-making process every step of the way for his 9,500+ Instagram followers. This time, he kept the build secret until he posted a video of himself playing it. And with good reason.
“I lost my beautiful wife to leukemia in August 2025,” he writes. “To honor her legacy, I built this guitar.”
The centerpiece of the pink offset is its sole fretboard inlay, which forgoes traditional mother-of-pearl in favor of a far more personal touch.
“I embedded her wedding band into the fretboard,” he explains. “Traditionally, it would be placed on the 12th fret to mark the octave. However, we were married for 10 years, 11 months, and 14 days [when she died]. Therefore, I decided to place the ring between the 10th and 11th fret to symbolize how long we had been married.
“If you look closely, you can see almost all of it sits in the 11th fret, since we were so close to our anniversary.”
One key part of the build, however, was documented, as he took her ashes and inlaid them into the signature on the gutiar’s headstock.
“This was the most painful experience I have ever had building an instrument,” he confesses. “But now, she is in every note I play. Having to deal with the technical aspects of building a guitar, while colliding with the emotional weight of who I lost was unbearable.
“Often, I could only work for 10-30 minutes on this before being physically and emotionally drained,” he continues. “This guitar needed to be finished before I could continue on any other projects. It took me over six months to finish.”
Karrah had survived ALL (Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia) and a bone marrow transplant for seven years before her passing, which naturally left Micah and his family devastated. But what a legacy he has created for her with his own two hands.
“Karrah was the Matriarch of our family and friends,” he writes in another post. “Nobody tells you that you can continue to love someone more even after they leave this life. I built this guitar to honor her life and her legacy in a way that is personal and sacred to me.”
At the time of writing, the main post has just shy of 35,000 likes, and the comments section is a reminder that not all hope for humanity – despite the problems in the world – is lost. The Teruya Matriarch is a thing of beauty.
And as Ukrainian luthier Tanya Shpachuk showed earlier this year, when she painstakingly restored a Gibson Les Paul left for ruin by a Russian drone strike, guitar building can send a powerful, positive message beaming into a world that can often be excruciatingly dark.
For other unique builds, check out Jack White's Ugly Stick, a garish guitar/half-bass hybrid made by Eddie Van Halen's go-to luthier, and the twin-necked microtonal monster powering the viral sensation Angine de Poitrine.
