Shawn May has been building custom bass guitars out of the Ann Arbor, Michigan area for nearly 20 years, chasing tonewood unicorns and sanding his fingerprints off in the process. Shawn builds under the name May Custom Basses, and he talks with Ian Davlin about his building style, which is a coffee-fueled blur of sawdust and sleepless nights, where 3 a.m. design epiphanies are just par for the course.