1993 Thomas Humphrey "Millennium" SP/CSAR

This 1993 Thomas Humphrey "Millennium" is a spruce-top classical guitar with CSA rosewood back and sides from his New York workshop, built at the height of the Millennium years.

Humphrey's Millennium Design

The "Millennium" was Humphrey's revolutionary re-thinking of the classical guitar: new soundboard bracing for increased transmission of tone, and – most famously – an elevated fingerboard for playability, an idea many makers have taken up since he popularized it. Concert artists such as Sharon Isbin, the Assads, Eliot Fisk and many others have played these guitars.

Sound

This 1993 instrument has the tone Humphrey lovers seek out: powerful, "hollow" and very focused, with projection to fill a concert hall.

Thomas Humphrey (1948–2008): Classical Guitar Maker in New York

Thomas Humphrey was born in 1948 in Minnesota. Around 1970 he moved to New York City, where he apprenticed with the guitar maker Michael Gurian, and for many years he built his guitars in an apartment workshop on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. Tom died in Gardiner, New York, in April 2008.

The Millennium: A Revolution in Classical Guitar Design

In the mid-1980s Tom introduced the design that made his name: the Millennium. With its raised fingerboard and newly conceived soundboard bracing, it changed the way many players – and makers – thought about the classical guitar, and the elevated fingerboard has since been taken up by luthiers all over the world. His earlier, traditional instruments are now known as "pre-Millennium" Humphreys. Humphrey guitars have been the concert instruments of many leading guitarists, among them David Starobin, Sharon Isbin, the Assad brothers and Eliot Fisk.