Roy Courtnall is a great English luthier, author, teacher and lecturer, Courtnall’s book; Making Master Guitars, is a practical guide and historical summary of leading luthiers of the 19th and 20th centuries, enabling readers to make reasonably close replicas of their instruments.

Courtnall’s work was initially focused on understanding and building instruments in the Spanish classical guitar tradition begun by Antonio de Torres during the 19th century and later perfected by Hermann Hauser, Daniel Friederich and Jose Romanillos. He then worked closely with the guitarist Rob Johns, to develop a lattice-braced concert guitar, influenced by, but not quite in the same vein as the Australian luthier Greg Smallman

During Roy’s early career, he had chance to work with one of the largest classical guitar dealer in the UK. Thanks to this, he had the opportunity to study a huge number of most famous guitars and was able to record their structure and sound, such as Santos, Torres, Romanos and Hauser II, which also inspired him about making this wonderful instrument. Recently, he worked closely with guitarist Rob Johns to develop a concert guitar supported by the eighteen-strut lattice layout. Roy explores the limitation of combaining the huge volume while retaining the elegant and beautiful sound texture of the traditional Spanish guitar.