2018 Tobias Berg CD/PW

This 2018 Tobias Berg is a classical guitar with a cedar top and pear wood back and sides, built in Germany with a boxwood bridge and bindings.

Dark Cedar, Pear and Boxwood

Another exceptional guitar from Tobias Berg. This is a bold-looking instrument with a very striking appearance - a dark cedar top with a contrasting bridge of lighter-colored boxwood and matching head veneer. The back and sides are of pear wood, with a golden, shimmery glow and maple-like flames throughout, and he uses boxwood binding throughout. The sound is as strong and elegant as its appearance - rich and velvety across all registers, with very sturdy, powerful basses and smooth, creamy trebles.

Design and Construction

Its unique, bold appearance owes much to Tobias' love of traditional Japanese architecture: perfect lines and sharp edges, used with understated elegance, shape the headstock, rosette and bridge, and blend seamlessly into his design. Tobias builds with double sides, a technique he has long been perfecting and which has impressed us in guitar after guitar (the full story is in our blog post). It gives the sound a deeper, almost "cathedral-like" presence, a quality we know otherwise only from modern Friederich guitars. An ebony strip inside the neck, invisible from the outside (unlike many Madrid-school guitars), adds stiffness and noticeably enhances sustain. Bold and beautiful in sound, unique and classy in appearance - a fantastic concert guitar by all standards.

Tobias Berg: From Sweden to Germany

Tobias Berg was born in 1972 in Helsingborg, Sweden, and grew up in the fishing village of Viken. After building his first classical guitar in 1995, he set out to learn the art and craft of guitar making, with courses and diplomas in Canada, England and the USA and time spent with top luthiers including Robert Ruck and Jeffrey Elliott. In 1998 he settled in Germany, where he worked for six years at Lakewood Guitars before earning the German master title (Meister) in Mittenwald in 2004 and opening his own workshop. Today he works in Kirchhain-Anzefahr, in Hesse.

Light, Compact Guitars with Double Sides

Tobias builds traditional, lightweight guitars with a slightly compact body, in the spirit of the Spanish makers of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, and since 2011 he has built them with double sides - a practice known from Madrid builders and from Daniel Friederich, whom he holds in very high esteem. His headstock, rosette and bridge designs reflect a fondness for traditional Japanese architecture. GSI has been working with Tobias since 2005, when he sent us his 20th guitar; in 2026 he built his 50th guitar for us.