2018 Jake Fuller "Purnell" SP/CH

A 2018 "Purnell" classical guitar by Jake Fuller, with a spruce top and English cherry back and sides – woods with stories that Jake tells in his own words below.

In the videos above, Tavi Jinariu plays Albéniz's "Rumores de la Caleta" (Elite Guitarist), George Sakellariou plays his arrangement of "Paint It Black", L I N Ü play Debussy's "Passepied" on this and another 2018 Fuller, and GSI's Chris Garwood gives a first look.

The Woods, in Jake's Words

"Spruce comes from the double bass maker, Mike Hart, who lives near me. He was going to use it for repairs, but I have managed to prize a few sets out of him. Cherry comes from Yorkshire. I visited a wood dealer up there while my son was playing cricket for Suffolk, and bought some. Lovely colour. Ebony is from an old railway sleeper, found at a siding in the East End of London while I was at college there."

Sound and Playability

Workmanship is clean, simple and refined, and the tone is textured, with plenty of overtones and excellent clarity and balance. The light body gives quick, early-Spanish response, the slightly heavier neck adds sustain, and the neck profile is very comfortable. A beautiful-looking and beautiful-sounding guitar by any measure.

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.