[gitarro]

Here is a question that intrigued me. The way I see it there are a few centers or locii of guitar building influence that have generated significant and unique strains of luthierie and thhat have resulted in different sounding and looking acoustic guitars.

The first and the greatest locus has to be the head waters for steel strings - the Martin factory in Nazareth. The very form and tone of the steel string guitar is exemplified by the Martin guitar. From them has flowed the X braced top and the distinctive building methods that have resulted in the Martin sound and reaching out to influence virtually every maker of steel string guitars in the world. Another old time source of influence is the Gibson factory. Most of the luthiers and small shops have made it their objective to reproduce the Martin and Gibson sounds and even the exact shapes and techniques used by them in their heyday, or to at least use them as their inspiration. Huss & Dalton, Santa Cruz, Collings, Merrill, Schoenberg, and so many others. Individual luthiers like TJ Thompson, Kim Walker, Circa, Franklin, Borges, Henderson, and too many to number.

Then there is the Larrivee factory that has resulted in a distinctively Canadian expression of luthierie and that has produced small shops and many luthiers of international class and status like Laskin, Manzer, Wren, De Jonge.

There was also the newer guitar design paradigm that was begun by Kasha and Klein and that is still seen in the guitars of Boaz Elkayam and Kauffman.

Across the Atlantic, George Lowden's unique guitars birthed a Northern Irish type guitar sound and we have Lowden, Avalon and McIlroy shops that have come out of that with even the influence going as far as Micky Uchida in Japan.

In England, we have the very unique guitars of Stefan Sobell that took as their starting point a Martin prewar archtop, and which has influenced NK Forster and Taran Guitars as well as Laurent Brondel in the USA.

Apart from the distinctive guitars of such makers as Fleishman, Brook and Fylde, are there any other globally significant sources of steel string acoustic guitar luthierie?