2014 Tobias Berg SP/PF

This 2014 Tobias Berg is a classical guitar with a spruce top and pau ferro back and sides, built in Germany a pre-owned guitar in excellent condition.

Spruce and Pau Ferro

His guitars are light in weight and therefore very comfortable and fun to play. They have a beautiful, liquid quality to the tone and are incredibly balanced. This guitar has a spruce top with great clarity between voices and a rich, velvety texture in every note. The back and sides are pau ferro, also known as "iron wood", striking and exotic in appearance. Its unique, bold appearance owes much to Tobias' love of traditional Japanese architecture: perfect lines and sharp edges, used with understated elegance, shape the headstock, rosette and bridge, and blend seamlessly into his design.

Double Sides and Condition

Tobias builds with double sides, a technique he has long been perfecting and which has impressed us in guitar after guitar (the full story is in our blog post). It gives the sound a deeper, almost "cathedral-like" presence, a quality we know otherwise only from modern Friederich guitars. Despite having been previously owned, the guitar is in excellent condition with only minor signs of prior use.

Photos of this guitar taken during construction

Tobias Berg: From Sweden to Germany

Tobias Berg was born in 1972 in Helsingborg, Sweden, and grew up in the fishing village of Viken. After building his first classical guitar in 1995, he set out to learn the art and craft of guitar making, with courses and diplomas in Canada, England and the USA and time spent with top luthiers including Robert Ruck and Jeffrey Elliott. In 1998 he settled in Germany, where he worked for six years at Lakewood Guitars before earning the German master title (Meister) in Mittenwald in 2004 and opening his own workshop. Today he works in Kirchhain-Anzefahr, in Hesse.

Light, Compact Guitars with Double Sides

Tobias builds traditional, lightweight guitars with a slightly compact body, in the spirit of the Spanish makers of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, and since 2011 he has built them with double sides - a practice known from Madrid builders and from Daniel Friederich, whom he holds in very high esteem. His headstock, rosette and bridge designs reflect a fondness for traditional Japanese architecture. GSI has been working with Tobias since 2005, when he sent us his 20th guitar; in 2026 he built his 50th guitar for us.