❌SOLD❌ Ethan Deutsch Flamenco Blanca Guitar, 2018

Here we have a wonderful recent Ethan Deutsch Flamenco Blanca guitar, built during 2018 in Seattle, Washington. This outstanding instrument features traditional Flamenco construction, with the goal of being very light and extremely responsive. The top is Engelmann Spruce paired with Cypress for the back and sides. The neck and body blocks are Spanish Cedar (Cedrela Odorata). The fingerboard is Ebony, and the headplate and bridge are Bolivian Rosewood. Bindings are Rosewood.

At the headstock, there is both an adherence to and departure from tradition: PegHeds tuners are installed. From more than a few inches away, these look exactly the same as simple wooden friction tuning pegs. However, these are geared tuners that provide stability, smoothness, accuracy and speed of tuning not available to friction pegs. You may note from the front view that the E strings are wound to the outside of the pegs, with the rest to the inside. This is to produce a straight line for the string, from the neck through the nut to the tuner.

This is a full 656 mm scale guitar, as Deutsch finds that to be the most effective for Flamenco models. The finish is gloss, applied as French Polish. A full size tap plate is stock on the top.

This is a nearly new instrument in excellent condition, and has not been played enough to fully develop its voice. However, it is very lively and responsive, with a brilliant tone and good projection. This should be fantastic after it has been played in.

A ChromaCast hard shell case is included.

Here is Ethan Deutsch on his Flamenco models:

“In a guitar shop in Madrid, I once played a flamenco guitar made by Santos Hernández, who is considered to have been the greatest builder of flamenco guitars ever. It was a small, very light-weight guitar, apparently not being very well taken care of–it was kept standing on the floor leaning against a wall. But I will never forget the extraordinary sound and playability of that guitar: It was so responsive that it seemed to almost play itself. That responsiveness has been the ideal towards which I strive in my flamenco guitar building.

My flamenco guitars are made with either cypress back and sides for blancas or Bolivian rosewood back and sides for negras. Occasionally I use other special woods for the back and sides such as birds-eye maple or Brazilian rosewood. I use Engelmann spruce for soundboards and bracing, Spanish cedar for necks, ebony fingerboards, and Bolivian rosewood for bridges and head plates. I have made a variety of rosette designs and am constantly inventing new ones.

I typically use Pegheds mechanical tuners which look like traditional wooden pegs but work smoothly because they are geared inside, but any kind of tuning machines can be ordered.

The scale length I typically use is 656 mm. Like the great 20th-Century luthiers Santos Hernández, Marcelo Barbero, and Domingo Esteso, I have found this scale length to be optimal for flamenco guitars. However I can use any scale length desired on a custom-made guitar. My standard neck has a nut width of 52 mm and is 60 mm wide at the 12th fret, with the combined thickness of the cedar and ebony being about 20 mm at the first fret and 21 mm at the 9th fret. Typically they are set up so that with the action at the 12th fret about 2.7 mm, the string height at the bridge is about 8 mm.

I use pultruded carbon-fiber reinforcement inside the necks, where it can’t be seen but prevents any warping of the neck. The finish I use is naturally colored shellac applied by French polishing.”

Ethan Deutsch builds concert grade Classical and Flamenco guitars in the Seattle, Washington area of the USA. Along his journey, he studied Flamenco in Spain at Morón de la Frontera, Sevilla with Diego del Gastor for a year, gained a PH.D. in chemistry from Princeton, worked as a research chemist, and in 1989 established a cabinet making shop in Chicago. He moved to Seattle in 1991 and began building guitars in 1997.

In addition to building guitars as a full time occupation, Ethan Deutsch performs under the name Mario Amaya.