Wynn & Co. Jewelry is the exclusive North American distributor for the Ritter Royals guitar collection and its signature piece, the Flora Arum, which has a price tag of quarter million dollars.

The Flora Arum is a bass guitar named for its distinctive floral-pattern fingerboard inlay made of 24-carat gold. The bridge, tuner buttons and knobs are also hand-cast in gold. Each inlay leaf is decorated with a black diamond, set in platinum.

That's just the beginning.

This bass guitar, the Flora Arum, is part of the Ritter Royals collection at Wynn & Co. Jewelry. It retails for $250,000. COURTESY WYNN LAS VEGAS

Flawless brilliant-cut diamonds totaling 3.3 carats have been placed on top of the volume and tone knobs, and tiny green brilliant-cut diamonds serve as knob position marks. The body is made of a single piece of highest-figured quilted maple, shaped by hand.

The nut, which is the rigid slotted bar used to separate and raise the strings, is made of at least 10,000-year-old mammoth-tusk ivory.

For those who are not musicians or jewelry aficionados, suffice it to say this is a remarkably beautiful instrument.

Equally as remarkable is the story behind the success of Jens Ritter, the guitar maker responsible for the Ritter Royals collection.

Ritter hails from Bad Durkheim, Germany, and his studio is in Deidesheim, a small southwestern town near the Rhine River. His career as a guitar maker began out of necessity. A musician who could not afford his own instruments, Ritter bought guitars in need of repair and fixed them.

"One day I wondered if I (would be) able to take a piece of wood and make it into a guitar," he said. "When I got two finished, I had no idea if they were good."

The editor of a German music magazine agreed to check out the instruments and was so impressed with the craftsmanship, he wrote a glowing review, which gave Ritter some local notoriety and led to his first sale: a barter agreement with a local chimney repairman.

The man recognized Ritter from the review and agreed to fix his parents' chimney (a job estimated at $2,500), in exchange for a custom-made bass guitar.

Ritter was unaware his reputation had grown far beyond his village of about 3,000 people until his doorbell rang one day and a guy he recognized as Madonna's bass player asked to see his collection.

"When you live in such a small place sometimes you are unaware of things going on outside of it," Ritter said.

It was then he realized, however, that a hobby that had grown out of his love for music was probably going to be his life's work.

Since that time he has added to his roster of high-profile customers and developed his most exclusive collection of guitars, the Ritter Royals.

Ritter said guitars made for a particular musician require a different process than a guitar for the collection. Each musician, he explained, has a sound he or she is striving for and the input Ritter is given helps determine how the instrument is crafted. It usually takes about a year from the time he takes an order until the guitar is delivered.

Although he recognizes that his guitars have become highly sought after, he is still a little humbled by his celebrity.

At a recent trade show in California, Phil Lesh, a founding member of the Grateful Dead, approached Ritter about making a guitar.

"We were at his place, and he was talking about how excited he was that I was going to make a guitar for him," Ritter said. "And I'm still having a hard time believing I'm even in his house."

Ritter said guitars have come to be appreciated as more than just another instrument to be smashed on stage at the end of a performance.

"More and more people do not just want a tool for their job or hobby, they want a piece of culture," he said.

He spent quite a bit of time in Italy, learning about the history of Stradivarius string instruments and the Stradivari family that produced them. Stradivarius instruments have come to be recognized as pieces of history and are as valuable as fine art. The better examples fetch millions of dollars at auction.

Ritter would like to see the electric guitar, which is still relatively new in the world of instruments, take its place as a cultural and historical artifact.

In recent years he has repurchased several of his early pieces at well above the price for which he sold them because he wants to preserve them. He must feel a little bit like Paul McCartney trying to outbid Michael Jackson for the copyrights to Beatles music.

Ritter chose Wynn & Co. Jewelry because its salespeople and customers recognize not just the beauty and value of the instrument, but the craftsmanship and artistic relevance of the pieces. He makes about 60 handcrafted guitars each year and refuses to cut corners despite the increased demand and profit potential for his instruments.

If there is a downside to his success it is that the impetus for it all - his dream of becoming an accomplished musician - has been put on hold, maybe forever.

"I stopped playing two years ago," Ritter said. "I just have no time to practice and if (I) can't devote enough time to be good, I won't do it."

The reward for his change in career path, however, might be greater than anything he could ever hope to achieve as a musician.

Even the most accomplished musician is limited by his life span. The music can be played almost indefinitely, but when the artist dies there are no new notes. With guitars that sell for six figures, that are recognized for their artistic value as well as their intended purpose, Ritter's instruments could be producing new notes long after he is gone.