ESSENCE
The ESSENCE enables deep musical expression and brings out your personality with great elegance.
Description
- Scale length 65cm
- handcrafted profiled headstock
- Scheller tuning machines with exclusive plate design
- Raised ebony fingerboard with a slight transverse curvature
- Full-length 20th fret
- soundhole rosette inspired by Nicolas Lambert (France around 1800)
- Solid top made of Alpine spruce or Western red cedar with five fan braces and three crossbars
- FABS bridge system for intonation adjustment
- Back and sides of material of individual choice; I am also happy to work with wood of appropriate quality supplied by you.
- Arched back with sides tapering to the neck
- Overall french polish
Background
Building on the KONZERT model, this instrument emerged from my contemplative search for a refined sound and intimate nuance. I created the bracing design intuitively as a five-fan bracing, crossed by three crossbars running over it. The traditional concepts of the German and Spanish guitars are thus layered on top of each other. The design also incorporates the modern ‘lattice’ concept.
The exterior design of the ESSENCE is inspired by 19th-century French guitar making, with its black and white decor and hand-carved ebony headstock giving the guitar a noble appearance. Concentric circles of the rosette emphasise the universal approach of the ESSENCE, while the small inlays in the central ring of the rosette add a modern accent and endow the guitar with an existential meaning.
Sound
The ESSENCE offers a consistent sound quality across the entire fretboard, up to the highest positions.
A powerful, solid foundation supports a multi-faceted, flexible sound with elegant sustain and sparkling overtones.
The individual notes, including the bass range, have a clearly defined temporal structure. This invites you to discover the finest nuances of sound, which the audience in the concert hall will reach with clarity and presence.
Alfred Brendel passed away recently, and I believe he was – and remains – a kind of ideal for me as a musician. I’ve been watching his concerts in various media libraries more frequently now, and they always leave me deeply moved. Afterwards, I find myself unable to listen to anything else – all I want is to play myself. And when I choose an instrument for that, it can only be my ESSENCE.
It’s the only one of my acoustic guitars that allows for something of what I so admire in Brendel’s expression: the height and the depth – and then that dimension one cannot name, where it feels as if the music itself is present as a person. Truth, beauty, and goodness – there it is. I’ve long wanted to share this with you. ESSENCE offers me the greatest opportunity to come closer to that.