2016 Jake Fuller "Purnell" SP/CSAR

A 2016 "Purnell" classical guitar by Jake Fuller, with a spruce top and CSA rosewood back and sides, made in Suffolk, England – the very first Jake Fuller guitar to come to GSI.

In the video above, Olivia Chiang plays Fernando Sor's Variations on a Theme by Mozart on this guitar.

Our First Jake Fuller

Workmanship and materials are top-notch – the soundboard is the last from a set Jake had bought fifteen years earlier. The sound is textured, with ample overtones yet excellent clarity and balance: a wonderful synthesis of the Spanish and Northern European styles.

Light Body, Stiff Neck

The body is very light, so the guitar responds like an early 20th-century Spanish guitar, while a slightly weightier neck and stiff neck joint give it noticeably more sustain, balanced across all registers. Playability is a breeze, with a very comfortable neck profile – suitable for any size of hall, and a wonderful recording instrument.

Jake Fuller "Purnell": An English Guitar Maker from Suffolk

Jake Fuller is an English classical guitar maker who has built guitars since the late 1990s, in a workshop first in Laxfield and then in Reydon, Suffolk. Woodworking runs in his family: his Cornish grandfather, Purnell, was a wheelwright who made carts, wheelbarrows, gates and furniture, and who lost a leg in World War I (he even built his own wooden leg); some of his tools, and a table that serves as Jake's workbench, are still in the workshop. Jake never met him, and he builds under the name "Purnell" – also his own middle name – as a tribute. His father, a toy maker in Suffolk, gave him his first apprenticeship.

Training with David Rouse, and the Spanish Tradition

A guitarist himself, Jake began classical guitar studies at 16 and went on to earn a BSc in Musical Instrument Technology at London Guildhall University, where he studied with David Rouse and David Whiteman. His main influences are Antonio de Torres and Hermann Hauser, with ideas from Santos Hernández and Masaru Kohno: traditional, lightly built Spanish guitars with a few refinements of his own, often made from woods with a story – reclaimed timber, old pianos, gifts from fellow makers.