2016 Dominik Wurth SP/IN

This 2016 Dominik Wurth is a classical guitar with a spruce top and Indian rosewood back and sides, built in Germany, from the year he came to GSI to study the Russell Cleveland collection.

A New Approach After His GSI Visit

Dominik visited GSI earlier in 2016, primarily to inspect and study several guitars from the Russell Cleveland collection, and this is the first spruce-top guitar we received from him afterwards. Until then he had built his guitars in a very stiff way, especially the sides and back - an approach shared by many makers from Ramírez to Friederich - and he felt something was missing, particularly in the bass range.

Thinner Back and Sides, Less Doming

After playing the guitars at GSI, Dominik made many small adjustments which resulted in a completely new guitar: 3 bars on the back instead of 4, a thinner back, thinner sides and less doming on the top. The result is a lighter-built guitar with a fine compromise between a modern guitar and the old Spanish masters - to us, it has improved responsiveness in all registers and a bigger, more robust sound all around. This guitar plays easily, with an immediate attack and a lively, full sound behind it - overall a joy to play, and a fantastic instrument in every regard.

Dominik Wurth and the Cleveland Collection: photos of this guitar being built

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.