2004 Fritz Ober CD/CSAR

This 2004 Fritz Ober is a cedar and CSA rosewood classical guitar made in Munich, Germany, with dazzling sapwood-streaked back and sides and Reischl tuners.

Dazzling CSA Rosewood

This particular instrument features beautiful aesthetics, including the rosette and purfling details. Materials are stunning – incredibly gorgeous rosewood for the back, sides and head veneer, with dazzling grain patterns infused with generous amounts of sapwood. The tuning machines are top-quality Reischl with black horn buttons.

Power and Complexity from a Cedar Top

Playability is excellent. The sound is clear, focused and superb – excellent clarity and power for a cedar top, with a very woody, deep natural tone. It is quite complex, with a harmonically rich texture that gives it a very intriguing, mysterious quality. 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.