1997 Fritz Ober SP/CSAR

This 1997 Fritz Ober is a spruce and CSA rosewood classical guitar made in Munich, Germany, in the Torres/Hauser I tradition – a guitar whose sale benefits music education through the GSI Foundation.

A Fritz Ober Guitar for the GSI Foundation

This guitar was generously donated to our non-profit charitable organization, the GSI Foundation. Guitar sales through the GSI Foundation raise money to directly benefit music education in public schools. Feel free to contact us for more information. It has had only one single owner to date, who purchased it new from GSI in 1997 and has now donated it back to our foundation.

Gorgeous Materials and Nearly Unmatched Workmanship

Fritz was known for building some of the best Torres/Hauser style guitars of his generation, and his workmanship, choice of materials and quality of sound are not just outstanding but nearly unmatched. This particular instrument features some beautiful aesthetics, including the rosette and purfling details. Materials are all first-quality – it has incredibly gorgeous, colorful and aged CSA rosewood for the back and sides and a dark spruce top with generous amounts of bearclaw.

The Sound of Early "Spanish-Style" Hauser I Guitars

Playability is excellent. Sound is superb – clear, focused and perfectly balanced, with excellent clarity and power and a very woody, deep natural tone. We have always believed that Fritz was second to none in capturing the loose, warm sound of early "Spanish-style" Hauser I instruments. This is a sound with complexity – a harmonically rich texture that gives it a very intriguing, mysterious quality. The looseness, transparency, balance and inner chordal harmony make this guitar sound much more like an instrument that has been aging for 100 years.

Although this guitar is previously owned, it has almost no signs of prior use and is in virtually like-new condition. Overall, a top-level concert and recording instrument for the discriminating performer.

Orfeo Magazine No. 4: Hauser III, Blöchinger and Ober

Fritz Ober (1955–2020): From Rosenheim to Munich

Fritz Ober was born in 1955 in Rosenheim, Germany, and spent his youth in the small village of Übersee am Chiemsee, where he learned to play the guitar and discovered an early love for woodworking. He built his first guitars mainly for himself, learning largely from books, then served a two-year apprenticeship with Helmut Buchsteiner – at the time the only known luthier in Upper Bavaria besides Hermann Hauser II – before opening his own workshop in Munich.

Old-World Methods and the Great Masters

In Munich he found surprising demand for pre-Torres instruments such as Panormo-style guitars and Renaissance lutes. Through Robert Lundberg, a leading expert on historical stringed instruments, he learned the methods of the old masters: working without machinery or sandpaper, with natural hide glues and resins, and with hand-split spruce – he even sought out his own trees in the nearby Alps. Soon he was restoring some of the most important guitars in Europe's great collections, by Torres, Hauser I, Santos Hernández, Manuel Ramírez, Esteso, Simplicio, Bouchet, Friederich and Fleta, among others.

The Torres/Hauser I Tradition

What he learned from these masters shaped his own style, and for the rest of his career Fritz built almost exclusively in the Torres/Hauser I tradition, aiming, in his words, to "create the deep and profound singing qualities of the Spanish tradition (Torres), combined with the harmonic clarity, evenness and transparency of Hauser I." Working alone, he made only 10–12 instruments a year, and his players included the Romeros, Wulfin Lieske, Jürgen Ruck, Earl Klugh, John Ingwerson, Doug Rubio and Andy Summers. GSI was Fritz Ober's exclusive US dealer during his lifetime.