Sometimes a client will approach me with a unique commission, it’s on occasions such as these that a different kind of dialogue begins. Words expressed by the client guide me on a specific path. Soon reference images get shared, this leads to technical drawings being drafted, and then, like a magical phrase spoken through what was once ambiguity: words metamorphose into a “dream guitar”. The imaginative faculties of the commissioner and the technical mastery of the luthier merge, the result is a guitar with a truly unique DNA, both stylistically as well as sonically.
In this specific example here of “Santos”, the client was an old friend whom I had built for before. An accomplished classical guitarist, he sought a steel string to serve as a fusion between classical and a singer/songwriter sound. “I want a steel string that pays homage to the flamenco instruments of the past,” he said. The premise of his idea was to build a steel string disguised aesthetically as a traditional flamenco, and have an ease in playability to accommodate his classical technique.