I am an American maker of concert classical and flamenco guitars, living in Berlin since 2007. I work alone making classical and flamenco guitars, always focusing on refinement in all areas of construction, from aesthetics to playability and tonal response. I produce about 15 guitars per year, by commission as well as for a few select dealers.

I also occasionally work on special projects such as Harpsichords and Viola da Gambas, which were a specialty of mine in previous years and for which I am currently creating new blueprints of several historic instruments I had the opportunity to document more than 30 years ago. I am currently adding to my winter production 2 new Viola da Gambas for exhibition in Paris and Belgium next year.

I have lectured and taught instrument making in former years in the US, and today I am active in festivals, symposia and exhibitions throughout Europe. I am therefore very pleased to be have been invited to exhibit at the first Guitar EXPO & Festival of the Dutch Guitar Foundation and I look forward to seeing many of my friends there.

Contact details

Company Name: Jan Zonjee Gitaren
Address: Timonstraat 12, 3818 CL Amersfoort
Telephone number: 0031 (0) 332583649
Website: http://janzonjeegitaren.nl/contact/
E-mail address: info@janzonjeegitaren.nl

I’m a Dutch guitarmaker, making several types of guitars, classical, flamenco and steelstring, as well as ukuleles and other fretted instruments. I play the guitar since I was young and I made my first stringed instrument -a kind of cigar-box uke- together with my grandfather when I was 9. It took 35 more years before I made my first serious instrument, and than things went fast. I started as a full time guitarmaker in 1998. I learned a lot from my teacher Johan Rebergen in Utrecht and from several open-minded collegues.

In 2008 we moved to Amersfoort were I started to give courses in guitarmaking in my well equipped workshop. If you like to see what we are doing during the courses, I invite you to visit “De Gitaarmakerij”. I enjoy working together with my students and apprentices, old and young, who invite me to explore a broad series of instruments and give me the opportunity to learn from them.

I prefer to use European tonewoods for most of my instruments and try to avoid the use of scarce tropical hardwoods, not only for reasons of sustainability. I love the sound of instruments out of Walnut, Pear, Cherry, Sycamore, Cypress etc., but since customers of classical concert-guitars still prefer tradional Rosewood I have to compromise now and than.

Contact details

Company Name: JamV Guitars
Address: Ollandseloop 12, 5032 WJ, Tilburg
Telephone number: 0031 (0) 137851612
Website: http://www.jamvguitars.com/
E-mail address: Jamvguitars@gmail.com

I built my first guitar in 1986. In spite of the satisfying result in this first guitar, my family and my activities as an Instrumentmaker in the healthcare sector prevented me from building guitars for a long period.

This changed in 2003 when I discovered the Center for Musical Instrument Building in Belgium. After completing the module steelstring guitar where I was taught by Jacky Walraet, I was now so seized by the guitar building that a number of follow-up modules followed. I also followed the restoration and repair techniques modules and studied classical guitar building for 6 years with Walter Verreydt.

In 2011 I won the first prize at the Dutch guitar builders meeting. In 2014 I received "the Golden fingerplane" an annual prize from the Center for Musical Instrument Building CMB to encourage promising talent. This was a strong motivation to continue in the beautiful profession of luthier.

In 2015 I was able to do an internship with Lorenzo Frignani in Modena I graduated in 2015. In terms of sound, I prefer Instruments built in the "golden" era of the Spanish guitar, roughly from 1870-1930. Major examples are Antonio de Torres, Manuel Ramirez, Enrique Garcia and Santos Hernandez. I build according to the classic Spanish method whereby I use as much as possible the traditional techniques, materials and tools. I make historically justified copies of Instruments from these builders, approaching the original instruments in terms of both appearance and sound as perfect as possible. The knowledge I gain by building according the old masters, will eventually result in a model of my own signature.

Since 2014, I have been participating in the Leonardo Guitar Research Project, which is conducting research into alternative European wood species as a substitute for tropical endangered woods, used in the guitar industry.

I am looking forward to meet you all at the first Dutch Guitar Foundation Festival,

Hans

Born in 1971, I grew up and still live and work in the city of Essen, Germany.

Being a self-taught master-luthier (Best Master Exam in 2004), I have a wide interest of guitars of all epochs, styles and sizes. This interest grew over the years and now also includes lutes and theorboes.

My workshop is located in the southern, green part of my hometown, in the valley of the River Ruhr. Here I am creating between 12 and 16 instruments per year, using handtools almost exclusively. Over the years, I seem to have been going backwards more and more towards a slower, stress-free building process, using traditional materials, recipes and working methods wherever possible.