2014 Dominik Wurth SP/IN

This 2014 Dominik Wurth is a classical guitar with a spruce top and Indian rosewood back and sides, built in his workshop in the Alpujarras near Granada, Spain, from his years in Andalusia.

A Granada-Style Guitar on the Torres Plan

The basic plan is that of Antonio de Torres, Dominik's greatest influence - seven fan struts in a domed top and a tunneled lower cross bar below the soundhole, through which the two outer struts pass. From Daniel Friederich and Antonio Marín Montero comes the strong cross stiffness under the bridge that allows a thinner top, giving a big sound without boomy basses and a warmer, more colorful treble register. The sides are doubled for power and projection, as with Friederich, yet Dominik adds wood only where it helps acoustically, keeping the weight down - lightness being one of the hallmarks 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.