Jochen Rothel.
Born in 1969 in Kitzingen, a small town in northern Bavaria.
A family tradition of cabinet making from Grandfather to Father and now as a son of a cabinetmaker, woodworking has always been familiar to me.
In my teenage years I combined my interest in music and guitar playing and with my talent for manual skills had the idea of becoming a guitar maker. So in 1990 I started a 3 years apprenticeship at Lakewood Guitars – a guitar workshop where Martin Seeliger and his crew are building steel string acoustic guitars.
In 1992 I participated in the guitar making course of Jose Romanillos in Cordoba/ Spain.
With pleasure I remember the warm hearted, friendly and open minded atmosphere created by Jose and Marian Romanillos during the wonderful guitar festival. And it was there that I decided to specialize in classical guitars.
I left Lakewood Guitars in 1996 (after having been involved in the production of about 4000 guitars) and started to make my own guitars as a fulltime profession. I visited various colleagues to learn more about their different guitar construction concepts and traditional techniques like French polishing and mosaic work. After passing the master of crafts exam I moved to Oldenburg, a city in northern Germany where my workshop has been located since 1998.
I’m building my guitars in the traditional Spanish style as defined by Antonio de Torres.
Due to restoration jobs and contact with guitar collectors I had the possibility to study some great guitars of the old masters like Manuel Ramirez, Vicente Arias, Domingo Esteso, Gomez Ramirez, Weissgerber and Hauser I.
The strong, warm and expressive sound of these instruments was very inspiring and encouraged me to adopt their light weight construction and quite low body frequencies to my own guitars. As a result my guitars have a sonorous but cultivated character and they are powerful concert instruments.
It is absolutely important to me that my guitars are very precisely crafted and that they have an elegant and beautiful appearance.
