These are the main characteristics of Spruce, Cedar and Redwood: Spruce will give you a brighter crispier sound with more punch, open, clear tone. Cedar will be a little warmer. Spruce takes longer to open up. You can also see it this way: Baroque Classical and Renaissance music will sound better on spruce, Romantic, Spanish and program music will sound better on Cedar. These are of course generalizations and what is definitely true is that both Cedar and Spruce make for excellent soundboards and perform marvelously in all types of repertoire. Redwood is very similar to Cedar but with more presence. Italian Spruce is my favorite. Brilliant sound and tight grain. Port Orford cedar has qualities of both Spruce and Cedar. Sinker Redwood is simply outstanding but rare and expensive.

Regarding 650mm or 640 mm guitar construction, keep the following rule at hand: If the distance between the tip of your thumb and the tip of your little finger is equal or less than 9 in. when fully stretched, use 640 mm (image above). In over 33 years teaching and playing the classical guitar and having worked closely with such great teachers as the Spaniard Jose Tomas and the Uruguayan Abel Carlevaro, it came clear to me that often hard to polish musical passages were not the fault of the player but a fault of the scale used for the fingerboard.

The radiused fingerboard has been around the acoustic and the electric guitar since day one. The same is true for most instruments of the Stringed family of instruments (violas, violins cellos, bass). Radiusing (image above) makes barre and left hand stopping a lot easier. The only drawback is that you will never want to play a flat fingerboard after that. If you are having your custom guitar built, I am all pro radiusing the fingerboard. The standard fingerboard is flat. When you relax the hand, you will notice that the natural shape is with a slight curve on all 5 fingers. Pros playing is about achieving to perform on the guitar in as much a natural and relaxed manner. Whenever you part from these directives, you are making your path to perfection steeper. The radius is standards on the acoustic, electric and archtop (jazz) guitar and, if you look closely, you will notice that these players will use lot less energy than classical players and that their fingers are almost always curved.

The hole in the upper and/or lower bout is called Soundport or Monitor hole. It augments the trebles output and works as a sound monitor for the performer. I highly recommend this. I offer a simple version and a more stylized version that resembles a Lute Rosette.

The violin type of bridge is a great input in guitar construction. A lot of the strain caused to the guitar top by the pull of the strings is taken away prolonging the life of the woods for many decades. The armrest is also genial because it keeps the tendons in the forearm more relaxed and is a source of comfort during performance. The armrest also prevents the armrest from interfering with the vibrating top. Both look fantastic.

I strongly recommend and am a big fan of African Blackwood. This is the hardest wood on the planet and, being a practically non porous wood, it does not loose nor gain humidity. Therefore, it never shrinks or curves and stays straight for centuries. Ebony is often considered the number 1 choice it is more oily and porous than Blackwood and always a great favorite in guitar fingerboard construction. The other best choices to African Blackwood are Rosewood, Maple and a large variety of Tropical woods like Cocobolo, Ziricote and Bocote make the ranks as great alternative fingerboard material that can be selected to match the back, sides and head plate.

Onboard equalizers have no effect on the acoustic performance of the instrument. Installing them, is not just a matter of making a couple of holes on the ring but a time consuming highly precise labor. The tuner which comes with the equalizer is in my opinion a great plus which you will find useful many times over.

1) Hauser: (image below) It is perhaps the most traditional type of bracing for the classical guitar. It consists of a set of measures first introduced by the Spaniard Torres and later taken to its perfect format by the German Hermann Hauser III. Segovia played Hauser braced guitars for decades before he switched to the the Double top (Doble tapa).

2) The lattice is a concept based on the A frame of grand pianos. The back and sides are kept rigid by means of a sturdy A shaped frame and the top is thinned as much as possible to allow the top to vibrate generously. As you see from the picture above, the thinned area is approximately 1.2 mm thick (Vs. 2-2.5 in the standard thinning techniques). Lattice delivers a lot of volume and wonderfully clear trebles.

3) The Double top was introduced by Manuel Contreras II and refers to an additional piece of wood that is covering the inside of the back. "Tapa" in Spanish means back. Therefore, the Contreras Double top is actually a Double back. The other variation to the doble tapa, is a system I first saw and played on a 1986 Ramirez Doble tapa when I lived in Madrid. The system was a Contreras based one nevertheless. Choose Doble tapa if you want a Spanish sound.

4) The Double top Variation 1, is a variation to the doble tapa Contreras. It is extremely powerful. It consists of a second top (normally cedar) that runs parallel to the first one halfway between the top and the back. It is the system that better seems to show what one would expect a double top to look like. The 2 tops are connected through the sides and the transversal struts and the resulting sound is full and very powerful. This is the most laborious of the 3 doble tops from a construction point of view. It is my preferred type of bracing and augments volume and sustain exponentially.

5) The double top with Nomex is also known as hollow top or composite top, consists of a sandwich type of construction where a thin layer of synthetic fire retarding material (Nomex) is inserted between two super-thin tops. The total thickness of the 3-layered top is equivalent to a normal top. The center layer is practically speaking hollow, therefore it is also called "hollow guitar top". This is more expensive because 2 tops+Nomex and special adhesives have to be used in the construction. Double top makes the sound of the guitar stay up longer before it decays. It brings about balance in the voices.

Let me clarify that all the above types of constructions make for world class concert instruments. It is likely that if none of these sound familiar, than you always played on a Torres (the system that Herman Hauser later perfected). The other systems are more expensive because more time is required in the preparation but they are not better nor worse, they are different. So that you can refer to sound in order to to decide, keep this in mind: John Williams' sound until 1986 was Hauser. John Williams' sound since 1986 is Lattice. Andres Segovia's sound from the 1980s is Double top (Var.1).

Do not hesitate to ask help: mail Maestro Bellucci

The default finish on all Bellucci concert guitars is the shiny Polyurethane finish. It is the most used type of finish on guitars throughout the world. Nitrocellulose is very similar to Polyurethane but adapts better to sudden changes in temperature and humidity because it is a more flexible material. French polish is the oldest type of finish and often requested by sound purists especially on the top.

When ordering a guitar, every player will ask me to set the action as low as possible without any buzzes. Since every player applies different amount of strenght when plucking the strings it is impossible to set the action precisely to each player's will. The Spanish builder Fleta, had come up with this genial idea which consists of pushing the bone more or less into the groove on the bridge. The player would set the action to his liking and then either cut off the excess or keep it intact in case he decided to lower or raise the action depending on humidity conditions, etc. On request, I can prepare a Fleta saddle bone for an extra 80 US$.

The mother of pearl inlay work adds immense beauty to the guitar. It is a labor of endless patience and elevates the guitar to an artistic level of amazing proportions. It is made entirely by hand and will keep you in awe for hours at a time.

Solid 18kt gold plaque with your name engraved.

The Bellucci hand embossed leather case is a work of art on its own right. Built by one of a handful of very talented leather embossers in Latin America. It takes countless hours of patient labor to emboss a single case.

DHL Express Worldwide Shipping, in an indestructible wood crate (8 mm thick reinforced walls).