2025 Youri Soroka SP/AR

This is Youri's latest model and features several new design features which delivers a fresh, new type of sound. For the guitars we've had from him in the past, Youri was emphasing traditional Spanish designs in his work. With this guitar, he uses these models as his starting point (plantilla, bracing, etc), however with a few modifications of his own, we feel this guitar has now entered the French school in terms of feel, sound production and even quality of sound. The most significant change is that he has doubled the sides (the interior with alder) to give them a more rigid, solid structural role - forcing the sound vibration to remain largely on the soundboard, and not scattering to the sides. This sturdier and slightly heavier body build gives the guitar noticeably bigger volume and improved projection. Quality of sound is plump, creamy and fat, yet very clear and defined at the very immediate attack. So absolutely no beauty of sound has been lost, it's just been made larger. He has managed to retain his Spanish "low-body" resonance (which is between F-F#) which not only gives the guitar a very satisfying bottom-end but also thick, lyrical trebles as well. Materials are well selected as usual, including spruce taken from the same tree as he used on his "Templars Oak" guitar, built for us in 2022 as well as a very colorful and beautiful set of African rosewood for the back and sides. Fit and finish are exacting and clean, and fitted with a lovely set of Alessi tuning machines. Overall a fantastic concert guitar by all measures and a successful advancement in Youri's development as a luthier.

Photos taken during construction

On location with D'Addario - Youri Soroka and Yaroslava Ihnatenko

We met French-Ukrainian guitar builder Youri Soroka at the 2nd International "Antonio Marin Montero" Guitar Building Competition in Granada, Spain in 2018 and were immediately impressed with both the person and his work, and indeed ordered our first guitar from him at that time. He returned to Granada again in 2019 where he took second prize in the same competition. Youri’s backstory is almost as beautiful as the look and sound of his instruments. Here he describes how he went from a career in technology to falling in love with the craft of guitar building: "I was a computer software developer and came to guitar making by accident. Initially, I just wanted to repair my old classical guitar which led me to retable it. Impressed by the resulting sound and having then bought a few tools, I wanted to build one entirely from scratch. I completed my first guitar in less than a month working at night in my garage. Then the second, then third… I was starting to fall in love with the process. At some point, I realized that this was really something I wanted to do for a living as this was the first time in my life – when at work – I was saddened by the fact that it was 6 p.m. and time to go home. I always admired traditional and historical woodworking, and starting from my third build, I tried using hide glue and traditional methods for overall construction. Since then, I’ve stuck with these methods. Another thing important to me is building guitars in a planet friendly way with the least waste generated possible and no chemicals used – no gluing bindings with scotch, etc. The main ingredients are wood, hide glue and shellac. This also led to my interest in using local woods."