2014 Dominik Wurth CD/IN

This 2014 Dominik Wurth is a classical guitar with a cedar top and Indian rosewood back and sides, built in his workshop in the Alpujarras near Granada, Spain, early in his career as an independent maker.

Dominik Wurth in Spain

After studying in Zwickau, Dominik moved to the south of Spain, to a small village in the Alpujarras near Granada, and set up on his own after an internship with Andrés D. Marvi. This guitar comes from those years.

Torres Plan, Cross Stiffness and Double Sides

Like his other guitars of this period, it is built on the basic plan of Antonio de Torres, whom Dominik cites as his greatest influence: seven fan struts in a domed top, the two outer ones running through a tunneled lower cross bar below the soundhole. Two contemporary makers matter to him as well - Daniel Friederich and Antonio Marín Montero - and following them he gives the top a strong cross stiffness below the bridge, which lets him thin it further for a big sound without boomy basses and with richer color in the trebles. He doubles the sides for more power and projection, as Friederich does, but only where the acoustic benefit is achieved, so the guitar keeps the light weight typical of the Granada style.

Dominik Wurth: From the Black Forest to Granada

Dominik Wurth was born in 1982 in Ettenheim, near Freiburg, Germany, and spent his childhood in a small rural village at the foot of the Black Forest. He discovered the guitar in his early twenties, and soon wanted a better instrument than his beginner guitar - so he decided to build one. In those early years he learned with the aid of books and from Sascha Nowak of Freiburg, who taught him the traditional techniques of guitar making. In 2007 he enrolled at Zwickau University (Faculty of Applied Arts, Schneeberg), the world's only university offering the study of stringed-instrument making, graduating in 2012; along the way he also earned the German master title for plucked-instrument making.

A Gitarrenbaumeister in Bad Krozingen

Dominik then spent several years in the south of Spain, in a small village in the Alpujarras near Granada, where he interned with Andrés D. Marvi and then opened his own shop. He later moved back to Germany, where he builds guitars full time - today in Bad Krozingen, just south of Freiburg. GSI is his US dealer.