2010 Stephan Connor SP/CSAR (ex Grisha Goryachev)

This 2010 Stephan Connor is a spruce and CSA rosewood classical guitar with a traditional solid top and 22 frets, formerly owned by Grisha Goryachev.

A Traditional Connor

There is no double top or lattice here: the solid spruce top has five fans and four transverse braces between the lower harmonic bar and the foot. The elliptical sound portal in the bass-side rib is there, and the fingerboard runs to 22 frets – up to a high D. The label reads “Stephan Connor, Constructor, 2010, Boston”.

Ex Grisha Goryachev

Grisha Goryachev acquired this guitar during his classical studies at Yale with Eliot Fisk; when he returned to an exclusively flamenco career, he sold it. It is tremendously powerful, with bear-claw spruce and an exquisite set of CSA rosewood.

Stephan Connor and the Sound Portal

American luthier Stephan Connor has specialized in concert classical guitars since 1994. A music graduate of the College of Wooster in Ohio, he learned guitar making at Timeless Instruments in Saskatchewan, worked for many years in Boston – the city on his labels – and now builds in Cataumet on Cape Cod, Massachusetts. In 1993 he drilled a hole in the side of a guitar so the player could hear it better, and the sound portal facing the player has been his signature ever since.

Power with a Traditional Voice

His guitars are sought by players who want maximum power while keeping a natural, traditional quality of sound. Eliot Fisk was the breakthrough artist, and Angel Romero, Sergio and Odair Assad, Scott Tennant, Marco Tamayo, Anabel Montesinos, José María Gallardo and David Tannenbaum are among the many who have played them. He builds both traditional fan-braced and lattice-braced tops, with bracing patterns of his own design.