2018 Jake Fuller "Purnell" SP/CSAR

Jake Fuller made this "Purnell" classical guitar in 2018 with a spruce soundboard and CSA rosewood back and sides – our second CSA rosewood guitar from him.

In the videos above, Tomasz Fechner plays Villa-Lobos' Étude No. 8, and L I N Ü play Debussy's "Passepied" on this and another 2018 Fuller.

Back to CSA Rosewood

After several guitars in a myriad of woods – Jake is equally at home with maple, cherry, Honduran rosewood and walnut – it was lovely to see another CSA rosewood guitar from this very fine maker.

Sound and Playability

As always with Jake, the workmanship is clean, simple and refined. Its voice is textured yet clear, with ample overtones and fine balance; the very light body answers quickly and the stiff neck joint gives long, even sustain. Playability is a breeze – at home in any hall or in 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.