Happy New Year

Happy New Year everyone!!!

The last time I posted here was in February 2022 and I am thinking about where to start here for weeks now. Of course there has been a lot going on in the shop last year 2022 and I think I am trying to wrap up the years business. 

I was on a mission to get my guitars in a new direction, more flatpicker friendly if you will. And in order to find out where I could be going I started with the blueprint and build a guitar to the specs of a Martin style 18 OM guitar. The body shape was my own but the dimensions very close to those of the Martin OM. Top and back thickness and bracing, especially the voicing of the board, I tried to get as close to it as felt right to me with very little exceptions. That was a quite a step away from what the style I developed for my own models being very much Ervin Somogyi inspired in terms of voicing. 

A certain style of voicing, not only the top bracing but the whole guitar really is involved, will produce an instrument that is capable of a certain or maybe a few genres of music where it really blossoms. I have been mainly focusing on fingerstyle. A few years from now I started to play the guitar with a pick and it changed so much for me. One thing was a certain sound I was looking for. But not only the sound and maybe even more I was looking for a certain response. Some call it "punch". For me it has to do with how the guitars reaction to my playing feels like. For a fingerstyle player I want to build an instrument that feels like a piano. The tone has to be huge even with a very light input like plucking a string with a finger. With a pick I want to be able to drive the guitar and feel the guitar respond to that.

Once the guitar was done I was getting really excited because it exceeded my expectations, and even is directions I did not expect. First the punch was there. That was a major step. But I realized that a lot of things I contributed to my style of bracing had nothing to do with that at all. It was a great opportunity to take a step back and check again. But the guitar did what I wanted it to do and I was (and still am) pretty happy with it. So happy actually that two more guitars with this "new", well new for me, bracing were build in 2022. 

Appart from that I have build three custom orders with a clear focus on fingerstyle. A Robin and two Jay models. All three have been very exciting and fun builds. Very different woods and different voices to be found. Two of those guitars were bespoke orders for clients, the Robin in African blackwood and Alpine spruce, very restrained and elegant and the other a fan fret cutaway Jay with a sinker redwood top and American walnut back and sides. The third guitar was supposed to go to the Guitar Basar in Osnabrück who haven´t received a new guitar from me for almost three years now. 

Another highlight not only for 2022 but for my entire career was having my first apprentice and having him build a guitar on his own in my workshop and under my guidance. Valentin stayed for a few months and at the end build a very elegant and refined instrument that really impressed me. 

This has had such an impact on me that I will not be able to do it justice by mentioning it at the end of this update post so I will want to write about Valentin in more detail later. But here is him with the guitar he has build.