2020 Dominik Wurth SP/IN

This 2020 Dominik Wurth is a classical guitar with a spruce top and Indian rosewood back and sides, built in Germany, one of his first guitars with three-layer sides and a compensated nut.

After the Cleveland Collection

Dominik names Torres as his greatest influence, and the first guitars he built for us were on the basic Torres plan, with seven fan struts in a domed top and a tunneled lower cross bar below the soundhole. Daniel Friederich and Antonio Marín Montero were early influences as well. His style has since become more personal through studying the instruments of the great makers of the past - he visited GSI soon after we acquired the Cleveland collection to evaluate many fine instruments at once.

A More Modern Sound

Recently Dominik has been trying new ideas in search of a more modern sound for his classical guitars, distinguishing them from his traditional Torres models with their lush, loose, warm and "Old World" sound. One is making the sides from three thin layers of wood, which adds power like the widely used double-sided construction, but with less overall weight - he liked the very first result so much that he has used the method ever since. This guitar also has a compensated nut, another new development for him, giving excellent intonation, especially in the lower registers.

To us, it has improved responsiveness in all registers and a bigger, more robust sound all around, with balance and excellent intonation. This guitar plays easily, with an immediate attack and a lively, full sound behind it - overall a joy to play, and a 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.