Featured Luthier - Ethan Deutsch

Ethan Deutsch has one of the more fascinating luthier biographies we’ve read. He started out as a high school dropout who moved to Morón de la Frontera to study with Diego del Gastor in the 70’s, and eventually decided to become a guitar maker, but his frustration at the lack of instruction on guitar-making sent him back to school, where he earned a Ph.D. in chemistry at Princeton. All this time he was performing as a flamenco guitarist under the name of Mario Amaya and learning to build furniture, which eventually led him to starting his own furniture business, and we all know that can only lead to one thing – making guitars. He now builds full time, and the response to his guitars has been fantastic. He makes a very light-weight fast and punchy flamenco that feels very old-world in a very good way. He just sent us some videos of Gerardo Nuñez checking out one of his guitars at one of Nuñez’ annual workshops in Sanlucar – check them out and check out his latest blanca with pegs here.