2023 Jake Fuller "Purnell" SP/MP

A 2023 "Purnell" classical guitar by Jake Fuller, with a spruce top and flamed maple back and sides – with an optional soundpost that lets the player change its voice.

In the videos above, Jake himself talks about this guitar, Mircea Gogoncea plays three of Dušan Bogdanović's "Balkan Miniatures", and Renata Arlotti plays the Prelude from Bach's Cello Suite No. 2 and Castelnuovo-Tedesco's "Tonadilla".

Flamed Maple and Honduran Rosewood Trim

The materials are lovely: a beautiful spruce top and a set of flamed maple, with Honduran rosewood bindings, a walnut head veneer and bridge, a lightweight laminated fingerboard, and strutting designed for extra stability and stronger bass.

A Removable Soundpost

To keep the weight down while keeping the stiffness he needs, Jake adds his own methods to an otherwise traditional, Torres-style guitar: a laminated veneer at the foot instead of a bulky end block, and four highly tapered transverse back bars supporting a longitudinal "floating" bar. An optional soundpost can stand between this floating bar and the lower harmonic bar of the top. Jake notes that the soundpost raises the body resonance by a whole step and enhances the midrange – brighter, more separated voices for contrapuntal music with it, a warmer, more romantic sound without it.

Sound and Playability

The sound is textured with ample overtones, yet clear and balanced; the light body gives a flamenco-like, snappy attack followed by a rich, lush tone. The neck is very comfortable – a guitar for any hall, and for recording.

Photos of this guitar being built

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.