2026 Brian Itzkin "635" SP/AR

This is our second guitar from Brian Itzkin who we feel is currently the number-one young/up-and-coming US luthier. Hands-down. And all we can say is that lightning has struck again. To us, this is everything anyone could want in a guitar. The power, the weight, the playability, the visuals, and most importantly the sound - although a "modern" guitar it captures the qualilties of the old Spanish guitars that were the instruments that have been so loved and cherished over the last 150 years by players, audiences and general music lovers. Brian's deep passion and love of the tradition - especially his hero Antonio de Torres - have been harnessed and focused into the build of this instrument. It is to us so refreshing to see how Brian's enthusiasm and understanding of the craft has been successfully captured here. It is astonishing, especially since he's not even 30 years old yet! The guitar has a dark, deep, old-world sound with rich harmonic content filling every note, yet not distorting or muddying the fundamental, partially also thanks to the low body resonance. The result is a clear, focused but rich and beautiful sound with a noticeably wide tonal palette of colors - the proverbial "symphony in a box". Simply put, this guitar really has everything any sensitive guitarist could want to fully express any musical idea in any of the guitar's repertoire.

The guitar is as beautiful in appearance as in sound. His materials are incredible, and we're discovered that Brian is quite the "lignophile" (yes that's a real word!) - for this guitar, he used three different "African rosewoods" - the fingerboard and head veneer are Dalbergia Trichocarpa, one of - if not the densest rosewoods from Madagascar. Bridge is Dalbergia Baronii, the most common Madagascan rosewood, and back and sides are Dalbergia Greveana which is a fairly plain looking Madagascan rosewood species but the weight, density, and tap tone are all nearly identical to Dalbergia Nigra from Brazil. Bindings are made of holly and the soundboard is highly marbled "bearclaw" Italian alpine spruce, an unbelievable set with copious amounts of "aguas" giving not just a lustrous "3D" appearance but also an indicator of being perfectly quartersawn - the must structurally, aesthetically and sonically desirable cut from the log - wow!

Structurally, Brian worked with the general ideas of Torres/Hauser, using a 7-fan system with bridge patch. The smaller scale of 635mm and 51mm make this comfortable in practically anyone's hands and there is absolutely nothing given up in either quantity or quality of sound - the guitar itself may be more compact but the tone is not - it remains as huge as his full-sized build. The 4-piece back and overall body proportions were inspired by several old guitars, Brian mentions two Torres, FE-05 from 1857 and FE-21A from 1864, as well as an 1870 Vicente Arias. The rosette pattern borrows the chain-link motif from a group of Torres from 1887-1888 (SE 111-116) for the central band and is flanked on either side by several layers of green/brown/blonde purflings and singular bands of half-herringbone patterned in 3 brown to 5 white ratios - subtle yet striking to the eye. Overall this is a beautifully made guitar and although new, sounds incredible straight out of the case and will only improve with continued playing. We are very happy to be working with this fine maker and look forward to many more!

Photos of this guitar taken during and after construction.

Brian Itzkin was born in 1996 just outside of New York City on the north shore of Long Island. He began guitar lessons at the local music store at age 8, originally wanting to learn his favorite rock and roll riffs, but found himself with a classical teacher who was at the time a DMA candidate at Stony Brook University. Brian remained with this teacher for 10 years, learning to read music and play in the classical style. His childhood teacher, Jason Priset, is now the director of the Lute Society of America's "Lute Fest" and an adjunct professor at Montclair University in New Jersey. Recently, Brian has been working on his playing again and is doing quite well.

His introduction to guitar making was when he built his first guitar at the age of 13 from a CF Martin kit in his father's poorly equipped basement workshop. Brian says that it was somewhat playable but inspired him to build another. After that second guitar Brian began a correspondence with the highly regarded steel-string maker Ervin Somogyi which lasted between the ages of 14-18. During this time Somogyi sent Brian assignments via mail and email and the two met yearly at the Woodstock invitational luthier show. The basis of their correspondences focused on guitar design; and although Somogyi is a steel-string maker, the ideas he taught and shared with Brian were a major catalyst for Brian's switching his focus to classical guitars. At 20 years old in 2016 Brian took a "semester" off from college after his sophomore year to attend Stephen Hill's guitar making course in Spain - this proved to be a revelatory experience and Brian decided to postpone his university studies in favor of studying guitar making. The following year Brian spent 3 months studying with Daniele Chiesa in the south of Spain and further entrenched himself in the Granada guitar making tradition. Back at home, he spent the end of 2017 until the first months of 2020 equipping his workshop, collecting materials, and independently studying the life and work of makers like Antonio de Torres (his chief influence - those of you familiar with Brian will know that he even has a Torres headstock design tattooed on his forearm!), Robert Bouchet, Santos Hernandez, and Hermann Hauser before returning to Stephen's shop in March 2020. Brian stayed in Spain throughout the covid lockdown until early September and in that time built and sold 3 guitars. He learned enormously from this opportunity to spend so much extra time with Stephen, Evan Kingma, and Alessandro Perciaccante who at that time was taking over the role of Stephen's apprentice as Evan prepared to return to Canada. Brian has since returned to Spain for at least 3 months per year in every consecutive year and has befriended and (in a very informal sense) learned more about the Granada tradition from Rafael Moreno Rodriguez, varnisher Javier Campos, and many others. He has also assisted Stephen Hill in teaching his guitar making course in 2022 and in May of 2025. Brian has been featured in an article in Acoustic Guitar Magazine, featured in videos by Brandon Acker after buidling him an homage to Torres' FE-13. He also built the first-prize guitar for the High School Classical Guitar Competition in association with the Long Island Guitar Festival.