2017 Jake Fuller "Purnell" SP/WN

A 2017 "Purnell" classical guitar by Jake Fuller, with a spruce top and walnut back and sides, made in Suffolk – our fourth Fuller, and the first in walnut.

In the video above, Elite Guitarist presents Antonio Lauro's "Natalia" (Vals Venezolano No. 3), played on this guitar.

Walnut, a Milky-Brown Tonewood

Jake has an amazing knack for building with a variety of woods. After CSA rosewood, Honduran rosewood and English cherry, this guitar has walnut for the back and sides – a beautiful, milky-brown tonewood that is as delightful to the eye as to the ear.

Sound and Playability

The sound is textured, with ample overtones, excellent clarity and balance. The light body responds like an early Spanish guitar, while the slightly weightier neck and stiff neck joint add sustain across the registers. The neck is comfortable and easy, and the guitar suits any hall or the recording studio.

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.