2016 Fritz Ober SP/CSAR

This 2016 Fritz Ober is a spruce and CSA rosewood classical guitar from Munich, Germany, built by one of the leading contemporary makers in the Torres/Hauser I style.

A Thinner Top for More Volume

Fritz's style of sound is reminiscent of the earlier "Spanish-style" Hauser I guitars, whose soundboards were a bit thinner than on later Hausers – producing increased volume despite a more compact body size.

Bold, Clear and Charming

The sound has a strong old-world character and is immensely charming: bold and clear, with loose, colorful basses and resonant, penetrating trebles. His guitars of this period had a deeper body resonance, which gives the tone a bit more of a mysterious and dark character. The materials are gorgeous too – dramatic grain patterns and color in the CSA rosewood back and a beautiful piece of aged spruce for the soundboard make it as beautiful in appearance as in sound. Fritz Ober is clearly one of the leading contemporary builders, in our opinion.

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.