2021 Dietmar Heubner SP/CO

This 2021 Dietmar Heubner is a spruce and cocobolo classical guitar with refined strutting and a new solera – in like-new condition.

A Refined Design

Since the previous instrument he built us, Dietmar has further refined the strutting, created a new solera and reduced the doming of the soundboard. He told us that these changes resulted in a larger and more mature sound, as well as better projection and volume. The trebles are also more open and brighter, while the basses are cello-like, warm and flexible.

Materials and Condition

Materials are well chosen, including a set of old, 30+ years-old cocobolo with a beautiful reddish-brown color and an extremely lightweight spruce top from Austria. The rosewood-veneered headstock complements the snakewood buttons on the Scheller tuners. Although second-hand, this guitar is in like-new/mint condition. Chad Ibison plays Castelnuovo-Tedesco on it in the video above.

See photos of this guitar taken during construction on our blog.

Dietmar Heubner: From Stuttgart to Berlin

Like so many of the world’s top luthiers of the past, German luthier Dietmar Heubner started out his woodworking career as a cabinet maker in Stuttgart in the 1980s but quickly turned to the construction of classical guitars. After nearly 30 years of working in southern Germany, Dietmar moved his workshop to Berlin in the summer of 2018, where he joined a small community of luthiers who call themselves the “Berlin Luthiers” – colleagues and friends who find their collective a fertile ground for mutual inspiration and the genuine exchange of experience. GSI is his exclusive representative in the USA.

Traditional Guitars with a Bold, Modern Sound

Dietmar focuses on building traditional guitars with a bold, modern sound that allows musicians to create their own individual tone. His emphasis is on a wide dynamic range, great balance, an abundance of tonal colors and maximal projection, and he has an understated yet extremely elegant and precise aesthetic: a rosette of an inner mosaic of tiny pieces of wood between bands of purfling, with two outer mosaics of connected diamonds, and a French polish of the highest quality.