Steve Toon Guitars - INIZIO STUDENT GUITAR [Available on Order] Verified listing

Steve Toon Guitars - INIZIO STUDENT GUITAR [Available on Order]

Ever since I started building guitars, I had the idea to be able to offer a guitar suitable for advanced students or guitarists with a limited budget.

I felt that the guitar had to be made from high quality selected materials and worked by hand to produce the required characteristics as opposed to the many student guitars which are produced en mass often using plywood along with decoration and embellishment and a thick glossy lacquer as disguise.

INIZIO is a guitar using high quality solid tone woods and good quality hardware. The selected soundboard is from European spruce, back and sides from solid Indian rosewood along with a thin “c” profile cedar neck with an ebony fingerboard.

The guitar is built by hand in batches of two enabling me to refine the guitars to achieve a good tonal balance and clarity with the dynamics demanded by a good player. This puts a quality instrument into the hands of a player without any embellishments that do not contribute to the sound of the guitar.

The guitar features a rosette of my design made by a specialist company in Germany and also has padouk bindings which I think are essential to protect the guitar from minor knocks. The tuners are made by DeJong offering good stability at a very reasonable price. Tuners can always be upgraded if required.

The guitar is finished using very thinly applied satin nitro cellulose just thick enough to protect the wood but not have any dampening effect. The guitar comes supplied with a fully fitted good quality plywood case.

Priced at only £2,400, this handmade quality guitar offers superb value for money.

You can discover my interview in the blog of Luthiers.com here:

https://luthiers.com/toon-guitars-by-steve-toon-interview/

ABOUT THE MAKER  - STEVE TOON

I acquired my first guitar at the age of ten when my father found a broken one in a skip. Together we spent many hours repairing it, and since then I became captivated by its sound and intrigued by its construction.

I have been making guitars for more than 25 years and am fascinated by the process of turning beautiful wood into a living instrument of simple beauty which can produce versatile sound – whether aggressive and strong, powerful and passionate, or light and tender.

When I start a new guitar, I have an idea in my mind as to how the guitar will look and sound. I aim to make all my guitars respond individually to the player, and I select the wood very carefully, paying great attention to the soundboard and matching it with the most suitable sides and back. I use traditional methods and work almost entirely by hand.

My passion for making individual and distinctive guitars can best be summarised by Andres Segovia, the father of modern classical guitar playing, when he said:

“The guitar is a small orchestra. It is polyphonic. Every string is a different colour, a different voice.”