Features

A Girdis Guitar offers a unique blend of traditional old-world craftsmanship with modern design and construction techniques.

Girdis Guitars offers several sizes and shapes of acoustic flat-top guitars. (although these are called flat-tops, a 25 foot radius is built into the soundboard)

• Parlor
• Size One
• 00
• 000
• OM
• Dreadnought
• Slope-shoulder Dreadnought
• Custom sizes and shapes

Girdis Guitars is a one-man, custom guitar shop. There are no two models that are made exactly the same each time. Rob has made the choice to keep production limited in order to keep the quality at the highest level. This means that time will be taken to voice a soundboard to bring out the most of what it has to offer. This approach allows time to design and execute special touches that will further individualize an instrument.

Only the highest quality well-aged materials are chosen for use throughout the instrument. For instance, each brace on a Girdis Guitar is vertical grain spruce that has been perfectly hand-split for maximum strength. Girdis Guitars believe superior sound is a product of paying careful attention to the specific qualities of each piece of wood used to build the instrument and how well all the parts are assembled. This is not the norm in a factory setting, where buying wood in large quantities and the work of many people and machines contribute to the final product. In a one-man shop, every aspect of each guitar is attended to by the same person, from taking the order and interviewing the client about his or her playing styles, to evaluating any special needs, to choosing and thicknessing the materials, to maintaining integrity throughout the assembly process, finish work, and final setup.

Like many other luthiers working today, Rob has taken many cues from tried and true successful instruments of the past and combined these sensibilities with his own ideas and skills to create the guitars. Repair work on the side, which is a reality for most luthiers when they are starting out, has exposed him to the key elements of guitar design that must stand the test of time.

As a guitar player himself, Rob has played many great vintage and modern guitars, some factory made, others hand made, and he's taken note. The most successful instruments are built with sensitivity to the balance between being built lightly enough to be responsive, but with enough strength to stay together for many years. These guitars are the ones that possess that "can't put it down" quality.

One can find beauty in the sound, form, proportions, colors and figures of the wood, and in how an instrument feels in your hands. Yet when all of these elements combine into something greater, and begin to resonate with something inside of you, it can become a part of your life. A good instrument can open up other forms of self-expression no matter where you are on your personal musical quest. Music speaks in a language that uses no words, yet can evoke powerful feelings and emotions.

The result of all of these contributing factors on Rob's approach to building guitars, is that he strives to make sure every Girdis Guitar will have that quality of feeling greater than the sum of its parts.