2023 Dominik Wurth SP/IN

This 2023 Dominik Wurth is a classical guitar with a spruce top and Indian rosewood back and sides, built in Bad Krozingen, Germany, with a low-tuned body and Dominik's own system for taming wolf notes.

From the Torres Plan to Five Fans

Of his work, Dominik cites Antonio de Torres as his greatest influence, and the first guitars he built for us followed the basic Torres plan of traditional fan strutting in a domed top. Other influences come from the work of Daniel Friederich and Antonio Marín Montero. In recent years his style has become more personal through studying the instruments of other great makers of the past - indeed Dominik came to GSI shortly after we acquired the Cleveland collection, so that he could assess and evaluate a large number of fine instruments all at once.

For this particular classical guitar, Dominik has made some adjustments to his earlier design. Firstly, it has 5 fan braces instead of 7, which he feels helps produce a darker color in the trebles and lowers the air resonance very close to "F" (which is quite low).

Ebony Weights Against Wolf Notes

Low body frequencies like this generally increase the effect of "wolf notes". However, Dominik has developed a new technique, gluing small ebony weights to the underside of the top at specific nodal points to tune the wolf note to specific frequencies, which minimizes or even completely eliminates it. He is quite happy with this system, as the guitar is indeed quite low, with a very rich bottom end and thick, meaty trebles, while retaining great balance up and down the registers. Building a low-tuned guitar without wolf notes has been a long quest in the history of guitar making, and we're pleased that Dominik's new system handles this challenge beautifully.

Three-Layer Sides, Compensated Nut and Saddle

The sides are made of three thin layers of wood, which adds power to the whole guitar - similar to the double-sided construction used by many luthiers, but with less overall weight. He was so impressed with the results of the very first guitar he tried this on that all his subsequent guitars use the same method. This guitar also features a compensated nut and saddle for excellent intonation, especially in the lower registers, and slightly larger frets, which improve playability (less distance from string to fret) and make for really spectacular glissandos.

To us, this guitar has improved responsiveness in all registers and a bigger, more robust sound all around, with balance and excellent intonation. As with all his instruments, it plays easy, has immediate attack with a lively, full sound behind it, and has plenty of power for the player looking for a strong instrument that will project well in any concert environment. Fantastic instrument in every regard.

Dominik Wurth: From the Black Forest to Granada

Dominik Wurth was born in 1982 in Ettenheim, near Freiburg, Germany, and spent his childhood in a small rural village at the foot of the Black Forest. He discovered the guitar in his early twenties, and soon wanted a better instrument than his beginner guitar - so he decided to build one. In those early years he learned with the aid of books and from Sascha Nowak of Freiburg, who taught him the traditional techniques of guitar making. In 2007 he enrolled at Zwickau University (Faculty of Applied Arts, Schneeberg), the world's only university offering the study of stringed-instrument making, graduating in 2012; along the way he also earned the German master title for plucked-instrument making.

A Gitarrenbaumeister in Bad Krozingen

Dominik then spent several years in the south of Spain, in a small village in the Alpujarras near Granada, where he interned with Andrés D. Marvi and then opened his own shop. He later moved back to Germany, where he builds guitars full time - today in Bad Krozingen, just south of Freiburg. GSI is his US dealer.