Once the neck and the rim are attached, “I start playing,” he says. “I play every banjo as long as it takes to get it right.” Each adjustment is individual to the instrument. “I have no idea how I get the unique sound. I truly just build what I want to play. But I do have a multitude of things that I think should be a certain way—the shape of the neck, the angle of the neck to the rim, the cut of the rim—dozens of little things that add up.”

Then he adds the finishing touch: a subtle piece of inlaid artwork that stamps each piece as a Chuck Lee original. For Fleck, Lee inlaid the outline of a woman strumming a banjo in the crook of a crescent moon, carved from woolly mammoth ivory and gold mother-of-pearl.

At the end of the day, though, Lee is just as concerned with the person buying his banjo as he is with the aesthetics of the instrument. “I like to know that I brought pleasure to the end user,” he says. “I like to know that the instrument brought out something in them—caused them to be a better player, inspired them to write a better song. If I know I have positively changed somebody’s life, I’m fulfilled.”