2022 Jake Fuller "Purnell" CD/TW

Jake Fuller built this "Purnell" classical guitar in 2022 from the wood of a 1950s piano – a cedar soundboard and tulipwood back and sides.

In the video above, Jaclyn Jones plays the Romanze from Johann Kaspar Mertz's "Bardenklänge" on this guitar.

A Guitar Made from a Piano

The piano's soundboard was tight, straight-grained, perfectly quartered cedar rather than spruce, so Jake used it for the guitar's top. The piano's lid gave the tulipwood for the back and sides, whose greenish hue beautifully complements the warmth of the cedar. The walnut head veneer and bridge are ebonized, for a piano-like look, and the fingerboard is Honduran rosewood.

Construction and Sound

Jake's latest refinements – full-depth linings at the tail instead of an end block, a laminated fingerboard, carbon neck reinforcement and a raised back bar – add stiffness while keeping the weight to a minimum. The body resonance is deep, between F and F#, giving a dark presence in all registers and a lovely bottom end. Very easy to play.

How Jake turned a piano into this guitar (photos)

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.